IV Global Conference on Sustainable Product Development and Life Cycle Engineering
October 3rd-6th, 2006.
São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil
CORE'S REGENERATION BY PYROLYSIS —
Carlos Alberto K. Gouvêa1, Christine Althoff2, Waldir Albrecht2 and Fernando Wypych3. (1) SOCIESC- Sociedade Educacional de Santa Catarina, Joinville, Brazil, (2) Albrecht Equipamentos Industriais, Joinvile, Brazil, (3) UFPr - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Paraná, Brazil.
In the foundry industries there are two different kinds of sands residues. The green sand, that contains carbon and clays and the core sand, that contains phenolic resins to bind the grains. Cores can be produced with many different kinds of resins and are known by the process name. Core from shell process and Cold-box process are largely used and its regeneration is the goal of this work. Before and after pyrolysis degradation these two different sands were characterized by thermal analysis (thermogravimetry-TG), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), granulometric distribution, carbon content, humidity and also parameters by Brazilian Standardization for solid waste (NBR10004/04).
The pyrolysis equipment operates in low pressure, inert atmosphere and controlled temperature. According to TG spectra the degradation temperatures are 250-700 ºC for Cold-box and 450-700 ºC for Shell sands. Finally, after tests of compact ability, permeability, humidity, traction resistance and others prove that it is able to be used as green sand, some iron artifacts were molded in this sand with the same quality as the articles produced with virgin sand.
