Design and Implementation of Product Embodied Riser for Energy Conservation in an Aluminum Casting Process

Abstract

Traditionally in the foundry industrial practices, after the casting process is done, the runner and the riser are removed and reused to manufacture new components by re-melting them. This paper suggests an idea to design the riser in order to form a by-product of a desired shape on solidification so that the energy spent on re-melting these riser components is cut down. In this method, the solid riser obtained after solidification of the casting is used as a raw material or a semi-finished product and subjected to other processes without forming further cast products by re-melting it. The casting method adopted to experimentally verify the claim is green sand mold casting method to cast a cuboid pattern of cast aluminum grade LM4. A simple geometry of a cylinder of diameter 35 mm was chosen as the riser geometry and the mold was designed to house the actual product of a cuboid and the by-product as the cylinder. The results of this experiment confirm that 23.54% of energy conservation is achieved by the implementation of this method. The last section of this paper provides insights on the environmental impact of this method when adopted and applied to the foundry industries on a global scale. Since this method brings down the energy requirements of the casting industries, it highly benefits the industry in both economic and environmental aspects. This validates the need for innovation in the designing of newer manufacturing concepts to end up beneficial to the world.