Soybean Oil as an Alternative to Soluble Oil in Machining Mild Steel Materials

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of soybean oil as alternative cutting fluid to soluble oil in machining a mild steel material. Soybean oil and soluble oil (Standard) are used as cutting fluid when machining a mild steel material and their effect on the mild steel material was observed for 70 days. The results of the study shows that the use of soybean oil lead to a slight corrosion of the mild steel than that of the soluble oil used in the time past. The inability of soybean performance at 100% level to that of soluble oil may be due to racidity (decomposition) of soybean oil on the mild steel material, and the heat generated during machining. Although soybean shows a very high correlation (r) (0.782 and 0.730) on the rate of corrosiveness of the metal samples and looked more stable than soluble oil (fig.1) but still needs a further work. The result obtained by using chi-square (x2) also confirmed the above assertion by having soybean (B1) and soluble oil (S1) as not significant and soybean (B2) and soluble (S2) as significant.


Nigeria Journal of Pure and Applied Physics VOLUME 1, AUGUST 2000, pp. 17-23