EDITOR'S COMMENT
Huge investments to modernize the entire supply chain to make foundries competitive, the challenge
The year 2008 has been the beginning of the new era of the Indian foundry industry segment. As per the market indications, this is the year when a plethora of world foundry men will be coming down to the Indian soil, in order to throw up enormous business opportunity to the country’s foundry segment. This is the time when the Indian foundry men and the entire business circles as a whole will truly mark the spirit of India’s emergence as a force to reckon with. Indian foundry men, as they
say it, are quite accustomed to the crisis in the industry and the crisis management as well.
NEWS CORNER
Modernization of the foundry at Diehl Metall Messing
Diehl Metall Messing, Röthenbach an der Pegnitz, Germany, has placed an order with SMS Meer, a company of the SMS group, Germany, for the supply, erection and commissioning of a new vertical continuous three-strand caster for the production of brass billets. With this investment, Diehl Metall Messing plans to replace the existing two strand caster and hence safeguard the long-term
competitiveness of the company.
U.S. Aluminum Castings Wins Energy Award
U.S. Aluminum Castings, Entiat, Wash., has received an Energy Saver award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for significantly reducing its energy usage over the past year.
California Metalcaster Completes Military Order
AlumAlloy Co. Inc., Ontario, California, recently completed a contract for more than 300 bunker buster bomb nose cones for the U.S. Navy.
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
Aluminium Metallic Foam - A potential material for future
“Metal foam” or “metallic foam” has became a very popular term which is nowadays used for almost any kind of metallic material which contains voids. Aluminium Metallic Foams are currently arising interest among them. Metal foams are special cases of porous metals. A solid foam originates from a liquid foam in which gas bubbles are finely dispersed in a liquid. An attempt has been made to produce aluminium metal foams by melting route.
Experience with cokeless melting furnace
India does not have enough reserve of good quality coking coal and is compelled to import the same from other countries and would have to play in the hands of the exporter countries. The situation becomes more serious when the exporter countries are our competitors in the world casting market. This phenomenon is obvious from the recent stiff price hike of imported low ash metallurgical coke.
Optimisation of Process Parameters of CO2 Moulding Process with Reclaimed CO2 Moulding Sand for Better Knockout Property
Among the moulding processes, sand moulding has its own contribution to global casting production. Sand is seemingly among the most abundant materials on earth, yet like many other things that used to be inexhaustible, it is beginning to have an increasing value. The major concern for every foundry unit is processing the required quantity of sand to impose the required characteristic on it to yield the castings of sound quality. Progressive foundries today know the requirements for physical properties of the different types of sand that they use plus availability of various binders, material handling and the cost to dispose the discarded material.
SPECIAL COVERAGE
Cokeless Cupola - An alternate melting unit
In spite of strong competition from electric and rotary furnaces, cupola is used as the main melting unit in iron foundries for last several decades. It has considerable advantages over these batch type melters since it can accept a wide range of such raw materials including oily, wet and contaminated scrap, which are unsuitable for electric furnaces due to safety reasons. Cokeless cupola produces molten metal of desired chemical composition and temperature at the required rate in most economical manner. During cokeless cupola melting, there is a degree of refining also as the melt forms droplets during melting before collection in the well. As a result, many contaminants are reduced or lost. In coke-fired cupola, the coke is the basic fuel to impart heat for melting and high carbon ferro-alloys are extensively used with cupola charge for adjusting the chemical composition of metal, where as in cokeless cupola, the elimination of coke and its replacement by a clean fuel such as light diesel oil (LDO) or compressed natural gas (CNG) gives a number of advantages.
TECHNOLOGY/PROCESS REVIEW
Hydrogen storage in Magnesium Based Hydrides - A Review
As concerns over air pollution and global warming increases, it is the very necessity of time to have a reliable, cheap and above all clean source of energy. Although, renewable sources are often suitable for stationary applications, it is not suitable for mobile applications. Sustainable hydrogen is a very clean energy carrier because there is no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emission at the end-user level. In addition, hydrogen possesses a number of advantages over other energy sources. It has weight-based heating value of more than two times that of currently used hydrocarbon fuels. Also, hydrogen is very abundant in nature. Moreover, new techniques to produce, store, transport and hydrogen are under development and governments heavily fund their research. Commercialization and demonstration of novel hydrogen powered systems will facilitate the transition to a hydrogen society. However, the key issue involved in use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is its storage. Currently, using methods of hydrogen storage is not adequate to exploit hydrogen as a commercial fuel1. However, storage of hydrogen in the from of metal hydrides, especially as magnesium hydrides is a very promising method. Lot of work is being done on this topic all over the world and an overall review of the same is presented here.
New Zinc - Aluminium (ZA) Casting Alloys Replacing Al-Fe Alloys for Electrical Conductors
Aluminium alloys with 0.5-0.9% Fe content have largely supplanted 1350 EC alloy for building electrical circuits because the latter
frequently suffered from gradual loosening at terminals, which gave rise to overheating. This problem has been completely overcome in the new conductor alloys without sacrifice of conductivity.
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