Gas Quenching - An Environment Friendly Heat Treatment Process

摘要

Although liquid quenching is currently the most widely used industrial quenching heat treatment process, gas quenching is becoming an attractive alternative due to environmental considerations. But up to now, it has not experienced wide spread implementation due to some performance issues restricting the introduction of this technology. Compared with liquid quenching, the specific advantages of gas quenching include cleaner product surfaces, avoidance of the need for washing the parts after quenching, and elimination of environmental problems associated with the handling and disposal of liquid quenching fluids, all these lead to lower the operating costs of a hardening heat treatment process. In this paper the advantages and disadvantages of gas quenching process are presented. Effectiveness of gas quenching process is demonstrated in terms of heat extraction rate and compared with that of liquid quenching process.