Circular usage of waste cooking oil towards green electrical discharge machining process with lower carbon emissions

Abstract

A global manufacturing community is dedicatedly striving to implement the concept of NetZero in precision cutting of difficult-to-machine materials, specifically, Inconel 617 (IN617) with due consideration to environmental protocols. The fast strain hardening issue of the said alloy during conventional processing rationalizes the application of electric discharge machining (EDM). However, EDM has been criticized for its high energy consumption and limited cutting efficiency. Moreover, conventional dielectric (kerosene) employed in EDM has drastic environmental and operator health concerns. To address the abovementioned issues, waste cooking oil (WCO) has been employed in this study which enhances the reusability of resources and minimizes the cost of the dielectric. Making the process sustainable is imperative along with continuously escalating scarcity of engineering resources. Therefore, the potential of shallow and deep cryogenically treated electrodes (SCT and DCT) has been comprehensively examined against nanofilled WCO to achieve the aforementioned objective. Three different concentrations of powder (Cp) and surfactant (Cs) to uplift the machining responses are investigated through a detailed parametric experimental design. Core machining factors such as material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (SR), and specific energy consumption (SEC) are examined through optical and electron microscopy studies and 3D surface profilometry. Hereafter, machining factors are modelled using the artificial neural network (ANN) technique. An exceptional improvement of 80%, 25.3%, and 75.16% has been achieved in MRR, SR, and SEC respectively using nanopowder-mixed WCO against SCT brass compared to the responses’ values obtained against conventionally used kerosene. Furthermore, compared to kerosene, the maximum CO2 reduction of 79.97 ± 11.2% is achieved with WCO.

Comparative study on manufacturing of EDM electrodes by laser sintering process

“…By performing thermal simulations and analyzing the outcomes [1], engineers can gain a deeper understanding of the thermal behavior during the DMLS process. This knowledge can then be utilized to optimize the process parameters [2], ensuring the production of high-quality components with the desired mechanical properties and dimensional accuracy [49]. Table 2 shows transformations of these progression parameters focused on building a medium based on the three levels of laser sintering parameters.…”

Optimization of Cutting Parameters for Energy Efficiency in Wire Electrical Discharge Machining of AISI D2 Steel

“…Supply power ranges from 5 to 8 kW for some machines when machining steel AISI P20 [7]. Very few works like [8][9][10] investigate the influence of process parameters in the energy efficiency of EDM.…”

“…However, they do not report any work related to the use of the total energy consumption of the process as a response to being analyzed and optimized. This is surprising since electric discharge machining processes have been criticized for their high energy consumption [8].…”