Thermal Decomposition Behaviour of Foundry Sand for Cast Steel in Nitrogen and Air Atmospheres

Sand casting is the most widely used casting technique, known for ages, even since ancient times. The main goal of this study was to determine the thermal decomposition behaviour of foundry sand for cast steel. We first tested the basic properties of foundry sand, including its proximate analysis, chemical composition, and particle size characteristics; we next monitored the thermal decomposition behaviour of foundry sand for cast steel via simultaneous thermal analysis. We focused on the mass loss of foundry sand for cast steel at different heating rates in nitrogen and air atmospheres. We adopted a novel method to calculate the volatile release characteristic index of foundry sand. The volatile content of foundry sand for cast steel was very low, so the volatile release characteristic index of the sand could not be strictly calculated according to this concept. We calculated the thermal decomposition kinetics parameters of foundry sand, namely, the activation energy and preexponential factor, under kinetics theory. To thoroughly test the fitting effect, we conducted a single-factor analysis of variance on the source of error. The results showed that the independent variable has a significant influence on the dependent variable and that the fitting equation we selected is feasible and effective.

Thermal decomposition of hybrid ultramicroporous materials (HUMs)

The thermal decomposition behaviour of representative hybrid ultramicroporous materials (HUMs) is investigated. Decomposition is triggered by fragmentation of the inorganic pillar, yielding XF4 gases and metal fluorides.

Bananaroot Waste Valorization as Alternative Fuel

Around the world, one of the significant difficulties confronting numerous countries is the energy crisis and proper disposal of waste. 'Jalgaon' a city in the state of Maharashtra (India) is referred to as 'Banana City' as it produces half of the state's Banana production. In Jalgaon, banana cultivation is carried out in about 45,000 hectares of land. Here, the accumulation of waste roots post-harvest, about 67000 MT, is huge, creating environmental issues. The open dumping of waste roots occupies a huge problem limiting the valuable space in the field. The purpose of this study was to explore an appropriate method to dispose of the banana root waste efficiently. No study has been reported yet to effectively use banana root waste as fuel pellet. In this work, pellets were made out of the banana root waste, without additional binder, and the combustion properties such as proximate analysis, ultimate analysis, high heating value, and thermal decomposition behaviour were studied. The high heating value of the pellets was observed as 16.29 MJ/kg. The results of ash elemental analysis by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) equipped with an Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) detector showed that ash can be used as adsorbent and fertiliser. The work attempts to convert the banana root into a fuel of good commercial value thereby addressing the waste disposal issue after harvest.