Project aims to optimise lubrication in industrial machining
A Brighton University researcher has received nearly £200,000 for a project that will improve machine lubrication and cut the environmental impact of many industrial machining processes.
Professor Crua, a fluid dynamics specialist at the Sir Harry Ricardo Laboratories within Brighton University's Advanced Engineering Centre, is part of a £1.35m consortium project investigating Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) in precision manufacturing, which is being funded by Innovate UK.
Many UK businesses continue to rely on ageing machinery that uses an excess of costly, environmentally damaging and machine degrading coolant.
Instead of flooding a cutting area with coolant, MQL delivers a small quantity of oil to the cutting zone. This reduces the amount of coolant required by up to 99 per cent, while recent research by project partners at the University of Sheffield's Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre has shown that MQL can reduce running costs by up to half and energy use by a fifth. It can also avoid the need to clean the component after machining and reduce health risks to machine operators.
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