I am looking for a good general purpose coolant for flood cooling in a home based workshop. This is not going to be used on a daily basis so it will either have to be stored for long periods or disposed of after each use. Machining will be mostly aluminum parts which will most likely be anodized, so staining will be a concern. There will also be occasional jobs involving common steels, plastics and other non-ferrous metals. The flood cooling system will be pretty basic using a rubbermaid type container for storage, a filtration system, pump and aerator.
So I guess the synopsis of my criteria are as follows:
1. Inexpensive (good value)
2. Non-toxic or biodegradeable (need to be able to dump this down the drain or easily dispose of it)
3. must be stable when stored
4. must be good on a variety of materials, primarily aluminum alloys.
What can you guys recommend?