Abstract In the past twenty years, besides the technological and innovative efforts for production processes, there have been activities for the recovery and quality improvement of waste based on the ...development of sustainable solutions. These activities bring us closer to zero waste by protecting natural resources and reducing the environmental impact of production facilities. One of the essential approaches in this process is the industrial symbiosis (IS) approach. Efforts to implement the industrial symbiosis approach in an industrial park constitute the motivation of the study. The study aims to identify alternative enterprises that can evaluate the wastes generated in the main production process of the foundry industry with industrial symbiosis and rank them to establish a symbiotic relationship. First, the Pythagorean Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (PF-AHP) model has been developed to evaluate organizational factors, waste-specific factors, and economic and environmental sustainability criteria for establishing an IS network among alternative businesses. Then, alternative businesses were ranked to establish a symbiosis network with the PF-TOPSIS method. The proposed method contributes to the solution of a real-life problem that may arise when there are multiple alternatives to cooperate in the field of industrial symbiosis. By contributing this framework to the literature, the robustness of the results has been demonstrated through sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis. According to the results obtained, it was seen that the importance levels of economic factors came to the fore. Furthermore, among the alternatives, enterprises with high waste exchange potential, such as cement, took first place in the ranking.
The purpose of the study was to identify and typify the main qualitativeenvironmental aspects of the success of foundry enterprises facing economic changes. The research method developed was based on ...methodological triangulation. This procedure influenced the credibility of the collected data by including a significant number of sources and reducing the measurement error. The study used: surveying, face-to-face interviews, multiple case studies and content analysis. The survey made it possible to categorize the attributes of success (quality, sustainability, resources, flexibility, environment, management strategy customer relations). Assuming that the frequency of occurrence of an attribute indicates the level of its effectiveness, the following were considered the main determinants: training/courses, supervision and control, reliability and durability of products and compliance with standards and requirements, waste management and waste disposal, core and reserve capital, and customer service.
•Results are based on a questionnaire in the European foundry industry.•The energy efficiency potential is assed to be 7.5% of the total energy use.•Most important drivers to and barriers for energy ...efficiency are financial followed by organizational.•EPC is used among 23% of the foundries, third party financing among 12%.•Large energy management improvement potentials are uncovered.
Energy management plays an important role in the transformation of industrial energy systems towards improved energy efficiency and increased sustainability. This paper aims to study driving forces for improved energy efficiency in some European energy-intensive foundry industries. The investigation has been conducted as a multiple case study involving 65 foundries located in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. The most relevant perceived driving forces were found to be financially related, followed by organizational driving forces. Nevertheless, some differences can be appreciated according to the firm’s size and country. Almost half of the studied foundries lack a long-term energy strategy, about one-fourth stated that they have used Energy Performance Contracting (EPC), and only approximately one in ten foundries have used Third Party Financing (TPF). Among the studied foundries, three out of five have conducted an energy audit. On average, the energy saving potential according to the respondents is stated to be 7.5%. In conclusion, energy management in the European foundry industry, despite increasing energy prices and extensive energy policy actions taken by the EU, still seems to have great improvement potential, calling for future research and policy actions in the field.
•Carbon emission is introduced into inventory management of foundry enterprises.•The optimal policies provide techniques under different production patterns.•Adjusting production patterns in response ...to carbon restrictions.•The optimal policy has certain stability under a same production pattern.
In recent years, the carbon emission problem involved in various industries has attracted more and more attention from scholars, among which many scholars have incorporated the carbon emission problem into the inventory control process of the manufacturing industry. Motivated by this fact, assuming carbon cost is only incurred during the transportation, we develop a multi-period, multi-item periodic-review dynamic programming model to address the raw-material inventory management problem in a foundry enterprise. This model enables us to further compare two production strategies (strategy α and strategy β). The former represents the strategy to scale down the original consumption rate of raw materials in an equal proportion on the premise of maximizing meeting the carbon emission limit, and the latter represents the strategy to keep the original raw material consumption rate constant in early stage, but are taken to stop production when the carbon emissions are saturated. Due to the complexity of the proposed problem, we propose a mathematic algorithm based on Probabilistic Dynamic Programming (PDP) to derive the structural properties of the model. Groups of comparison of the expected total cost under different strategies lead to the observation that production strategy α generally performs better than production strategy β. Intriguingly, the sum of the initial inventory level and the optimal order quantity is approximately constant in one period. This phenomenon lasts for different periods under the same production strategy.
The problem addressed in the study reported on in this article is the decline of South Africa's foundry industry. This industry is valuable in terms of job creation and a sustainable competitive ...advantage (SCA) strategy is required to sustain the industry in South Africa. With the dearth of research on sustainability of the foundry industry, the research comprised three objectives; namely, to identify from literature the macroeconomic drivers, to empirically identify critical macroeconomic drivers, and to make recommendations on strategies for enhancing SCA for foundries in South Africa. The study was conducted during 2022 within the foundry industry in South Africa. Foundry representatives from foundries located in all nine provinces of South Africa were invited to participate in the study. The study adopted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods methodology, initially employing a quantitative approach, and subsequently applying a qualitative approach to ascertain the most influential macroeconomic drivers. Quantitative data analysis entailed descriptive methods, while the qualitative phase involved thematic analysis. The study contributes by identifying the macroeconomic drivers that can be used by industry leaders in the formulation of strategies for SCA within the African context.
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•Refractory wastes can be repurposed for creating new refractory hydraulic set mass.•The wastes were classified as non-inert and were not deemed hazardous.•The iron contamination did ...not exhibit significant changes in thermal behavior.•Particle size dispersion and reduction in the coarse fraction caused strength gain.•There is potential for cost savings of at least 25 % promoting a culture of recycling.
The foundry industry is responsible for consuming large quantities of lining materials and generating significant amounts of waste. Silico-aluminous linings are used in the production of cast iron due to their compatibility with molten metal and slag. However, after use, these materials are typically disposed of in industrial landfills, creating an environmental liability. This study demonstrated a feasible alternative approach to repurpose silico-aluminous refractory wastes from induction furnaces and casting ladles from the foundry industry to develop new materials for refractory hydraulic binders for lining (refractory patch). The wastes were characterized using X-ray Diffraction, X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry, Thermal Analysis, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and particle size distribution. The behavior of the lining wastes was found to be compatible with the proposed application, despite the expected contamination. There is potential for cost savings of at least 25 % and promoting a culture of recycling.
The foundry industry has gradually become an important concern for carbon emissions. The composite patternless casting, which combines sand mould 3D printing and sand mould milling technologies, is ...an effective way to explore the potential of energy saving and emission reduction in the foundry industry. However, the technical advantages of composite patternless casting in terms of energy saving and emission reduction have not been fully studied. To address this issue, this paper combines the composite patternless casting with the modular division method, and proposes a influence modelling and analysis method for carbon emissions and carbon efficiency ratio based on the process characteristics stage. The model and method are applied to the patternless casting process of a cylinder block. And the modular division schemes of the mould were proposed. The results show that through different modular division schemes, carbon emissions can be effectively reduced by 8.39%, the carbon efficiency ratio can be increased by up to 30%. This method is helpful to describe the carbon emission influence of the patternless casting forming process, and analyse the energy saving and emission reduction potential and carbon efficiency of the process.
Previous studies point out a large (untapped) potential for energy efficiency in industry through the adoption of energy management practices. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze energy ...management practices in two different Swedish energy-intensive industries: the pulp and paper industry and the foundry industry. The results show that one third of the studied mills and about two fifths of the studied foundries do not allocate energy costs by means of sub-metering, which probably contributes to reinforce the split incentive problem. Moreover, about one fifth of the mills and about half of the foundries lack a long-term energy strategy. The results also show that only about 40% and 25% respectively of the studied mills and foundries may be categorized as successful when it comes to energy management practices. If energy management is not fully prioritized even in energy-intensive industries – such as the studied foundry and pulp- and paper industry it will, in all probability, not be prioritized in less energy-intensive industrial sectors or countries either, indicating a large untapped potential in regard to cleaner, more environmentally sound, production in the industrial sector.
Due to increased globalisation, industries are facing greater competition that is pressing companies into decreasing their expenses in order to increase their profits. As regards Swedish industry, it ...has been faced with substantial increases in energy prices in recent years. Barriers to energy efficiency such as imperfect information inhibit investments in energy efficiency measures, energy audits being one means of reducing barriers and overcoming imperfect information. However, an evaluation of such energy audits in Sweden reveals that it is chiefly low-cost measures that are undertaken as a result of an audit. Moreover, these audits often tend to focus on support processes such as ventilation, lighting, air compressors etc., while measures impacting production processes are often not as extensively covered, which underlines the need for further support in addition to energy audits. Decision support is practised in a variety of different disciplines such as optimization and simulation and the aim of this paper is to explore whether investment decision support practices may be used successfully towards small and medium-sized manufacturers in Sweden when complex production-related investment decisions are taken. The optimization results from the different cases, involving a foundry’s investment in a new melting unit, indicate that with no electricity price fluctuations over the day, the investment seems sound as it lowers the overall energy costs. However, with fluctuating electricity prices, there are no large differences in energy costs between the option of retaining the existing five melting furnaces at the foundry and investing in a twin furnace and removing the holding furnaces – which was the initial investment plan for the foundry in the study. It would not have been possible to achieve this outcome without the use of investment decision support such as MIND. One of the main conclusions in this paper is that investment decision support, when strategic investment decisions are to be taken, may be a means of emphasising energy efficiency for energy-intensive SMEs beyond the level of traditional energy auditing.
The application of 3D printers significantly improves the process of producing foundry patterns in comparison to traditional methods of their production. It should be noted that the quality of the ...surface texture of the foundry pattern is crucial because it affects the quality of the casting mold and eventually the finished casting. In most studies, the surface texture is examined by analyzing the 2D or 3D roughness parameters. This is a certain limitation because, in the case of 3D printing, the influence of technological parameters is more visible for irregularities of a longer range, such as surface waviness. In the paper, the influence of the 3D printing layer thickness on the formation of waviness of the surface of casting patterns was analyzed. Three 3D printers, differing in terms of printing technology and printing material, were tested: PJM (PolyJet Matrix), FDM (fused deposition modeling) and SLS (selective laser sintering). In addition, the surface waviness of patterns manufactured with traditional methods was analyzed. Surface waviness has been measured using the Form Talysurf PGI 1200 measuring system. Preliminary results of the research showed that the layer thickness significantly influences the values of waviness parameters of the surface in the casting patterns made with FDM, PJM and SLS additive technologies. The research results indicated that the smallest surface waviness as defined by parameters Wa, Wq and Wt was obtained for patterns printed using the PJM technology, while the highest was noted when using the FDM technology.
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