Cutting fluid plays a cooling-lubrication role in the cutting of metal materials. However, the substantial usage of cutting fluid in traditional flood machining seriously pollutes the environment and threatens the health of workers. Environmental machining technologies, such as dry cutting, minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), and cryogenic cooling technology, have been used as substitute for flood machining. However, the insufficient cooling capacity of MQL with normal-temperature compressed gas and the lack of lubricating performance of cryogenic cooling technology limit their industrial application. The technical bottleneck of mechanical—thermal damage of difficult-to-cut materials in aerospace and other fields can be solved by combining cryogenic medium and MQL. The latest progress of cryogenic minimum quantity lubrication (CMQL) technology is reviewed in this paper, and the key scientific issues in the research achievements of CMQL are clarified. First, the application forms and process characteristics of CMQL devices in turning, milling, and grinding are systematically summarized from traditional settings to innovative design. Second, the cooling-lubrication mechanism of CMQL and its influence mechanism on material hardness, cutting force, tool wear, and workpiece surface quality in cutting are extensively revealed. The effects of CMQL are systematically analyzed based on its mechanism and application form. Results show that the application effect of CMQL is better than that of cryogenic technology or MQL alone. Finally, the prospect, which provides basis and support for engineering application and development of CMQL technology, is introduced considering the limitations of CMQL.

Environmental protection is the major concern of any form of manufacturing industry today. As focus has shifted towards sustainable cooling strategies, minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) has proven its usefulness. The current survey intends to make the MQL strategy more effective while improving its performance. A Ranque–Hilsch vortex tube (RHVT) was implemented into the MQL process in order to enhance the performance of the manufacturing process. The RHVT is a device that allows for separating the hot and cold air within the compressed air flows that come tangentially into the vortex chamber through the inlet nozzles. Turning tests with a unique combination of cooling technique were performed on titanium (Grade 2), where the effectiveness of the RHVT was evaluated. The surface quality measurements, forces values, and tool wear were carefully investigated. A combination of analysis of variance (ANOVA) and evolutionary techniques (particle swarm optimization (PSO), bacteria foraging optimization (BFO), and teaching learning-based optimization (TLBO)) was brought into use in order to analyze the influence of the process parameters. In the end, an appropriate correlation between PSO, BFO, and TLBO was investigated. It was shown that RHVT improved the results by nearly 15% for all of the responses, while the TLBO technique was found to be the best optimization technique, with an average time of 1.09 s and a success rate of 90%.