Energy Savings in Foundries through Yield Improvement and Defect Reduction in Castings

Energy conservation is an important step to overcome the energy crisis and prevent environmental pollution. Casting industry is a major consumer of energy among all the industries. The distribution of electrical energy consumed in all the departments of the foundry is presented. Nearly 70% of the energy is consumed especially in the melting department alone. Production of casting involves number of process variables. Even though lot of efforts has been taken to prevent defects, it occurs in the casting due to variables present in the process. This paper focuses the energy saving by improving the casting yield and by reducing the rejections. Furthermore, an analysis is made on power consumption for melting in the induction furnace to produce defective castings and improvement in the casting yield. The energy consumed to produce defective castings in all other departments is also presented. This analysis reveals that without any further investment in the foundry, it is possible to save 3248.15 kWh of energy by reducing the rejections as well as by improving the casting yield. The redesign of the feeding system and the reduced major rejection shrinkage in the body casting improved the casting yield from 56% to 72% and also the effective yield from 12.89% to 66.80%.