Yes Scott, the research done by Totten has been cited very often on many forums including this one. Unfortunately it is very often misquoted or misinterpreted, a fact regretted by people I know who have met Totten. It is very interesting and useful information but what one has to keep in mind was that the research was done to determine if vegetable based oils could be used as a less expensive and more environmentally friendly alternative to mineral oils for a base in formulated quench oils. The data provided shows that some vegetable oils do indeed have the speed to provide the necessary cooling, but need some further adjusting with additives to make them truly comparable to the quench oils currently offered. This research follows some European studies that found rapeseed oil to have a very good curve; for those who do not know rapeseed is what they call canola in Europe. Thus canola does indeed provide a very good curve in the initial critical cooling phase but needs additives and refining to slow its drastic curve in the final conductive phase, as well as to stabilize it for continued use; it is organic oil after all.
I find the research to be very exciting and promising and would very much like to see stable quench oils made from vegetable bases, it would be safer, less expensive every time petroleum skyrockets, and easier to dispose of. There must be some catch because to date only a couple of companies have went in that direction, Houghton International has a Bioquench oil that I believe is based on canola, and I have seen some others based on soy oil. With hope, in the future we will see more.
The work, and resulting write up by George Totten are very well done and compelling enough that I hope it set things in motion for industry to step it up in developing more vegetable based quenchants. But I have seen other work that doesn’t do the cause any favors. A paper I recently read on a foreign study of vegetable oils, I can only hope that much was lost in the translation to English. Details are scarce, vague and most of the conclusions merely state the obvious and are not wholly supported by the data presented, when actual comparisons are made. And interestingly enough the paper also cites the Totten work, which I think it merely tried to emulate. In short, enough confusion arises from good stuff like the paper you linked to Scott, it would be even more painful to watch if folks started reciting some other stuff I have seen.
