James C. Furness

The Environmental Performance and Cost of Innovative Technologies for Ductile Iron Foundry Production

The authors and collaborators have devised innovative technologies that decrease foundry costs, pollution, materials use, and energy. These include: (a) applying advanced oxidation to green sand and baghouse dust to diminish clay, coal, sand, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and costs; (b) replacing phenolic urethane core binders with collagen-alkali silicate binders to diminish VOCs; (c) replacing coke with anthracite fines held together with biomaterial to reduce energy and costs. It is proposed by the authors that if a foundry were to concurrently employ all these innovative technologies (with 50% anthracite bricks), it could potentially diminish overall costs by 6.6%, life cycle energy costs by 15%, VOC pollution by 57%, sand by 85%, clay and coal by 50%, and iron scrap by 9%. These computations are per full-scale operations for advanced oxidation; and R&D results for replacing binders and coke. This paper also notes that when electricity comes primarily from coal fired power plants, electric induction furnaces consumes more life cycle energy than do cupolas for melting iron.

Full-Scale Demonstration of a Hybrid Hydrolyzed Collagen-Alkali Silicate Core Binder

A novel core binder system has been devised that is comprised of hydrolyzed collagen and alkali silicates. Cores that employ this hybrid binder were tested in a full-scale demonstration at a partner foundry. Among the 244 iron castings manufactured at this facility while using these hybrid binders, none of the iron castings were rejected as scrap due to core-related defects. The core regions of these iron castings exhibited no deformation, veining, or erosion from molten iron exposure. Moreover, these hybrid silicate-collagen cores demonstrated satisfactory shakeout during full-scale demonstrations. This hydrolyzed collagen-alkali silicate binder yielded cores that achieved a higher tensile strength and less hot distortion than conventional phenolic urethane binders.