Foundry markets

Within the Italian foundry market, a centralised wet regeneration plant can offer regenerated sand at a price lower than that of new sand. 

Chromite Hir Only commercial source of chromium used in the metallurgical industry (85%) mainly as Fe-Cr for steelmaking, in the refractory and foundry market (8%) and in the chemical industry (7%). 

Most ferrous scrap is recycled in steelmaking processes by melting the scrap in either a basic oxygen or an electric arc furnace. However, a significant market exists for cast-iron products, which are also made by melting ferrous scrap. In 1991, world production of cast irons was estimated at nearly 3.9 X 10 t at over 14,000 iron foundries (15). 

Produces strong, blocky coke having good reactivity. Involves low capital and running costs. Production process delinks with availability of markets for byproducts. Allows shut down without any detrimental effects to refractory. Produces hard coke for foundry. The process is characterized by simplicity. There involves no requirements of extra fuel for heating as in by-product oven practice. 

The beneficial reuse of foundry solid waste has long been carried out informally, particularly in the U.S. Foundry solid waste has always been used as fills around the foundry or nearby neighborhood. With the promulgation of strict environmental protection laws, foundry solid waste is now required to be landfilled. Later, spent foundry sand was selected as a daily cover for landfills that are cover short. However, many recyclers believe that foundry solid waste should not necessarily be disposed of in landfills where other hazardous industrial waste belongs, simply because the main fraction of foundry solid waste is nonhazardous and has value in fully or partially substituting for currently in-use materials, for example, construction aggregates, soils, and minerals. Thus, reuse of foundry solid waste is marketable. 

In some case, experts may debate the reuse of nonhazardous materials, which, they insist, should still be dumped to general landfill sites where nonhazardous materials belong, like municipal solid waste. It is also insisted that there is no documented regulation requiring the reuse of nonhazardous materials. Therefore, to defend the beneficial reuse program of foundry solid waste, regulations should specifically permit their marketing. 

Of these markets, the only significant impact of urethane has been on the foundry adhesives market where urethanes have captured about one-third of the 150 million dollar market. Urethane adhesive use in the United States in 1979 is shown in Table III. 

The first synthetic thermosets used as adhesives were phenol-formaldehyde resins produced at the end of the nineteenth eentury, historically linked to Baekeland s process which attained industrial status at the beginning of the twentieth century [4], Furanic condensates appeared mueh later as a result of the marketing of 2. They were first used as foundry binders by Quaker Oats in 1960. The use of furanic resins in the aerospace industry began ten years later. Although furanic resins represent a mere 1 % of the total thermoset produetion, the high added-value of these materials amply justifies their use. In fact, furan-based adhesives and binders are fire-, solvent-, and acid- or alkali-resistant. They are known, however, to display two main drawbacks related to their sensitivity to shrinkage and oxidation. 

Polyurethane adhesive consumption has been estimated at 217 million pounds (1991) having a value of approximately 301 million (see Fig. 2). Applications contributing to this volume are shown in Table 1. It is interesting to note that while the packaging market is the fourth-largest market in terms of pounds of urethane adhesives sold, it is substantially larger than the forest products market and the foundry core binder market in terms of... 

Table 2.10 gives the relative share of the various core-making processes in German automobile foundries in 1991. This shows that the amine cold-box and hot-box systems dominate the market. Over 90 % of the automobile foundries use the amine cold-box system. The other processes (croning, C02-silicate) are mainly used for supplementary use, i.e. making cores with specific requirements (size, thickness,...). 

Table 4.29 provides a guide to the typical yields obtained for different types of iron casting production. It is not possible to recommend a target yield figure which can usefully be adopted by a particular foundry, as so much depends on the type of metal, type of casting, the production facilities and the market whieh has to be served. It is therefore necessary that a foundry sets individual targets, based on an analysis of its own current performance. 

---