Comparison of Oxidation Stability and Quenchant Cooling Curve Performance of Soybean Oil and Palm Oil

The potential use of vegetable oil-derived industrial oils continues to be of great interest because vegetable oils are relatively non-toxic, biodegradable, and they are a renewable basestock alternative to petroleum oil. However, the fatty ester components containing conjugated double bonds of the triglyceride structure of vegetable oils typically produce considerably poorer thermal-oxidative stability than that achievable with petroleum basestocks under typical use conditions. Typically, these conditions involve furnace loads of hot steel (850 °C), which are rapidly immersed and cooled to bath temperatures of approximately 50-60 °C. This is especially true when a vegetable oil is held in an open tank with agitation and exposed to air at elevated temperatures for extended periods of time (months or years). This paper will describe the thermal-oxidative stability and quenching performance of soybean oil and palm oil and the resulting impact on the heat transfer coefficient. These results are compared to typical fully formulated, commercially available accelerated (fast) and an unaccelerated (slow) petroleum oil-based quenchants.