Assessment of energy consumption, carbon emissions and cost metrics under hybrid MQL-Dry ice blasting system: A novel cleaner production technology for manufacturing sectors

Abstract

Modern industries are seeking innovative and clean cooling techniques in the machining domain to reduce the cost and environmental impact of manufacturing. To diminish the environmental impact of machining, cryogenic and minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) are recent known cooling/lubrication techniques to determine a perfect alternative to mineral-based emulsion cooling. The cryogenic has superior cooling capabilities and poor lubrication and MQL is vice versa. In this endeavor, a new hybrid MQL-dry ice blasting lubri-cooling technology is proposed in machining as eco-benign technology to investigate sustainability as well as machinability metrics in the milling of AISI-52100. The findings have shown that cutting speed and cooling/lubrication showed the most substantial effect on machinability and sustainability metrics. The experimental findings showed that the cutting speed has more significant effect on specific energy consumption, carbon emission, and machining cost. At highest level of cutting speed (300 m/min), processing time, specific energy consumption, carbon emission and surface roughness was 2.6%, 2.3%, 2.35%, and 22.6% less under hybrid dry ice blasting compared to MQL medium. The shares of the standby time in total energy consumption, carbon emission, and total cost are noticed to be dominant. The hybrid dry ice blasting shared a small fraction of the total cost compared to MQL, and dry ice blasting.