Heat transfer associated to a hot surface quenched by a jet of oil-in-water emulsion

In hot rolling, the mechanical properties of steel alloys are conditioned by the rolling process but a great part is ensured by the cooling of the hot strip mill. Well controlling this cooling rate and its homogeneity is thus of primary importance for obtaining steels with desired mechanical properties. As the water used in the cooling stage of the rolling process can be polluted by oil (in hot mill strip, some oil is used to lubricate the rolls and a part of it can pollute the water), it is important to know how much varies the cooling rates when water is polluted. In this study, transient cooling has been investigated during quenching of a hot metal disk with various subcooled oil-in-water emulsion jets. The aim of this work is to compare the cooling efficiency of oil-in-water emulsion jet with a pure water jet. Experimental investigations of axisymmetric jet impingements on a preheated hot metal disk (500–600 °C) have been performed with various oil-in-water emulsions. The transient cooling heat fluxes on the quenched side are estimated by coupling the measurement of the temperature field of the other side (rear face) with a semi-analytical inverse heat conduction model.