A Comparative Study on Commercial Grade and Laboratory Grade of TiO₂ particle in Nanofluid for Quench Medium in Rapid Quenching Process

Abstract

Heat treatment of material particularly quenching requires a high thermal conductivity quench medium. Hardenability of material, dimension, and geometry of the component are considerate on choosing quench medium. The cooling rate of quenching affects the properties and microstructures by creating specific phase transformation to occur. Enhancing the quench medium by accelerating the cooling rate can be attained by the addition of nanoparticle which has higher thermal conductivity. This nanoparticle-added medium is commonly termed as nanofluid. Commercial and laboratory grade of TiO2 was used as the nanoparticle to distilled water as the nanofluid base to acquired higher conductivity on the heat treatment process. In this experiment, a top-down method was done to obtain TiO2 particles by grounding using a planetary ball mill for 15 hours at 500 rpm. Nanofluid quench medium was mixed with TiO2 in various concentration of 1%, 5% and 10% with a volume of 100 ml each. Samples of AISI 1045 or JIS S45C carbon steel were used to obtain different cooling rate on a different type of TiO2 particles. Samples were heat treated by austenizing at 1000°C for 1 hour, followed by rapid quenching in nanofluid quench medium with the addition of agitation as quenching variable. Observation of particle morphology and size, material composition, and the change of surface ere measured by Field-Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM), and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDX). Initial characterization showed that the TiO2 particle size was at 150 nm range, and roughly free from any impurities. Martensite microstructures have the most significant area and the amount at laboratory-grade TiO2 in 0.2 wt% composition, followed by commercial-grade at 0.3 wt% composition.

Effect of Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube and Polyethylene Glycol Addition in Nanofluid Quench Medium for Steel Heat Treatment Application

“…Several types of solid particles can be added to nanofluid, including metals, metal oxides such as CuO, TiO2, and Al2O3, as well as carbon-based particle (Arularasan and Babu, 2021;Ramadhani et al, 2019;Xia et al, 2014). Carbon-based particle, specifically advanced types such as MWCNTs, has garnered increased attention due to the significantly higher thermal conductivity (Chen, Zeng, and Yuan, 2017).…”

The Effect of Pyrolysis Duration on Thermal Conductivity, Stability, and Viscosity of Dispersed PCB-Based Particles in Thermal Fluid

“…Generally, solid particles have higher thermal conductivity compared to any fluid. Several particles are commonly added to the fluid, such as metallic particles, metal oxide particles, and even non-metallic particles [5][6][7] . One type of non-metallic particle that is frequently used is carbon-based [8][9][10] .…”

On the Role of Nanofluids in Thermal-hydraulic Performance of Heat Exchangers—A Review

“…Furthermore, investigating the reduction in the number of publications between the years 2011 to 2013, the authors have found that during the aforementioned period, researchers have focused essentially on improving the HE designs and the use of renewable sources for providing thermal energy to the system (e.g., solar or biomass). Additionally, the employment of nanofluids has extended beyond that of HEs to applications such as air purification systems [25], quenching media [26][27][28], liquid fuels enhancement [29], medical treatment [30], magnetic sealing [31], nano-lubricants [32,33], and many other usages. This paper will provide an overview of the operating principles of HEs together with a summary of the development of the design of HEs to incorporate the more efficient usage of nanofluids as working media.…”