AZTERLAN Metallurgy Research Centre has signed a collaboration agreement with the Finnish company RESAND Oy. The aim of this partnership is providing technological support in the implementation of an advanced sand regeneration and recycling system, which will improve the environmental impact of the foundry sector and address the current problem regarding sand management.
The growing challenge related to the availability of new sand for the manufacture of molds and cores for castings production, hand in hand with the need to incorporate new solutions for the management of this waste stream that the industry generates in large amounts, urges the need to develop new technologies and methods of recovery, regeneration and recycling.
In the words of Lucía Unamunzaga, head of the Sustainability area of AZTERLAN, “we have had the opportunity to learn about this advanced technology, whose development and implementation can provide significant progress for the foundry industry, significantly improving the environmental impact and operation of the foundry. Developed by the Finnish company RESAND Oy, it is a modular regeneration system based on a thermo-mechanical treatment of sand, whose behavior we are intensively testing at a semi-industrial level, once the laboratory-scale tests have been validated”.
This system processes the spent sand through two stages that separate the sand particles from the binding material and other impurities through a specific thermal treatment, to subsequently separate said impurities and fines, and cools the recovered sand for reuse in its own foundry production system.
Through this technology, foundries can recycle a good part of the used sand to be able to reincorporate it into the core and mold manufacturing process itself. Depending on the binder system (green molding or chemical molding), recovery rates of up to 95% can be achieved (assuming a percentage of losses in the form of fines). An advance that makes it possible to significantly reduce the environmental impact of the foundry (savings in raw materials and purchase costs, transportation and landfill costs, etc.).
Image of RESAND™ modular sand regeneration system (source: https://resand.eu)
“Our collaboration agreement with RESAND reinforces AZTERLAN’s commitment to continue developing solutions that provide improvements in foundry technologies. In the case of used sand, we cannot forget that it represents one of the most important waste streams (it is the 5th non-hazardous waste stream in the Basque Country) and that it represents an area of growing concern for the industry, subject to increasing environmental requirements”.
A constant search for solutions for the sustainable management of sands
The development of technological solutions related to the management and recycling of foundry sands is a research field in which AZTERLAN is working from various complimentary approaches: recovery, recycling and reuse, in the same process or in other applications of added value.
These are somo of AZTERLAN’s most recent projects and developments in this area:
- Intelligent water dosing system for conditioning recovered foundry sands (technology in transfer)
- Development and demonstration of solutions to revalue sands in construction applications and materials (HICORE project)
- Development of solutions for the manufacture of molds and cores from reused sand
- Introduction of inorganic binders in iron and steel casting (LIFE Green Casting project)
- Advanced management of indutrial waste (field of action)
Other technical and scientific resources in the field of foundry sands:
- “Green Molding Sands” (handbook)
- “The sand crisis: overexploitation and recycling” (podcast in Spanish)
- Papers and technical contents
