In the current study, authors have synthesized Cu-Al Layered Double Hydroxide nanofluid at different molar ratios of Cu and Al by using co-precipitation technique and utilized this as a coolant in a pressure atomized spray to achieve high cooling rates in the temperature range of 900–600 °C for a 6 mm thick steel plate. The study initially focuses on the effect of Cu: Al molar ratio variation on thermal conductivity, stability as well as its heat transfer potential in steel quenching. Post thermal conductivity and stability analysis, spray cooling experiments were conducted in two parts. The first part involves optimization of Cu: Al molar ratio by varying the ratio (Cu: Al = 2:1, 4:1 and 6:1) at a fixed nanofluid concentration (120 ppm) to select the best Cu: Al molar ratio based on heat transfer results. The results show that the highest cooling rate and average heat flux were achieved at a Cu and Al molar ratio of 4:1 among all molar ratio combinations. Once, the optimized molar ratio is selected, the second part of the spray cooling experiments was performed to study the effect of nanofluid concentration variation (40–240 ppm, at an optimized molar ratio of Cu: Al = 4:1) on spray cooling results. With respect to concentration optimization, the maximum cooling rate of 168.6 °C/s was attained at a concentration of 160 ppm which is 26% higher than what was achieved by normal water spray. Results obtained from the spray cooling experiments were further verified by the thermal conductivity analysis where highest enhancement of 15.17% was also observed at 160 ppm nanofluid concentration. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.