Investigating alternative uses for Spent Foundry Sand

After an extensive literature review by TransFIRe researchers, a number of potential applications for re-using huge quantities of Spent Foundry Sand (SFS) have been identified. As part of Work Stream 2 of the TransFIRe project, which focusses on creating new materials and process opportunities for the foundation industries, TransFIRe researchers have been undertaking a case study focussing on potential uses of Spent Foundry Sand (SFS), a waste product of UK metals foundries leftover after the production of sand moulds or cores for casting of metals. A literature review, carried out with input from the Cast Metals Federation, John Winter Ltd and Wm Lee Ltd, was undertaken to identify potential opportunities for re-using SFS and several applications were identified within ceramics, glass, cement, fillers in concrete and asphalt; and several others. Although SFS can be successfully recycled and used numerous times, the sand grains eventually degrade and their ability to [...]

2023-05-15T08:44:48+00:00May 15th, 2023|
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Could a national glass bottle return and refill scheme work in the UK? An industry perspective

In 2019, the UK recovered 71% of single-use glass by mass, but only around 36% was used to make new container glass. This low circular rate is partly because the UK has a mixed collection system which requires the glass to be sorted into different colours before remelting and results in less cullet (waste glass for remelting) returned than in separated colour collection. Much of the glass is therefore used in aggregates for roads, resulting in nearly 50% of potential cullet not being used for new container glass bottles. The international nature of glass production and trade also means a large percentage of the bottles manufactured in the UK, particularly clear bottles, are exported for recycling, resulting in a loss of materials over which the industry has control. These and other challenges to circular-loop recycling of container glass raise the question of why there are not large-scale national refill [...]

2024-04-29T14:46:58+00:00May 12th, 2023|
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Key intervention points for implementing a circular economy in UK’s Foundation Industries

Insights from the Master’s thesis of Saikiran Medam Circular economy is an alternative to the linear take-make-waste economy and strives to minimise resource usage, extend the lifetimes of products, and close energy and material loops, thereby promoting sustainable development. It helps to reduce carbon footprints in the foundation industries by following circular business processes such as lean manufacturing, industrial symbiosis, remanufacturing, and recycling. In order to gain insight into this subject, I performed analysis on a range of factors that act as drivers and barriers for the implementation of a circular economy in foundation industries and identified a priority list of key intervention points. This was achieved by using a context analysis to identify an initial 91 potential factors which were consolidated via an online survey to 12 factors. These were then further examined and analysed, with input from experts from industry, government and academia. My study found that [...]

2023-05-16T08:45:36+00:00May 2nd, 2023|
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TransFIRe attends the launch of The Manufacturer MX Awards 2023

Representatives from TransFIRe joined the great and the good of the manufacturing sector at the House of Lords this week to celebrate the official launch of this year’s “The Manufacturer MX Awards”. Professor Mark Jolly (Director), Prof Konstantinos Salonitis (Deputy Director) and Dr Sanjoo Paddea (Business Development & Hub Manager), all attended the gathering which has a combined heritage of over 50 years and is widely regarded as the gold standard in industry awards. Delivered by The Manufacturer in partnership with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), TMMX Awards exist to encourage, benchmark and celebrate manufacturing excellence, with every stage of the programme providing value for participants, whatever their maturity. With a keynote from Lord Karan Bilimoria and contributions from across the sector, including current TMMX Awards Manufacturer of the Year, Gripple, the event marked the official opening for entries for this year’s awards, which will take place on [...]

2023-03-21T14:25:27+00:00March 20th, 2023|
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Spotlight Interview with Professor Mark Jolly

Can you introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your role within TransFIRe? I'm Mark Jolly, Professor and Director of Manufacturing and Materials at Cranfield University and I've been in post for about three and a half years. I'm actually a metallurgist by background and worked in industry for many years before moving into academia.  After spending some time at Birmingham University, I moved to Cranfield about 10 years ago and became more and more interested in energy and sustainability. This led me to co-write and co-create the idea for the Transforming Foundation Industries Research and Innovation Hub, or TransFIRe. My role in TransFIRe is really to get foundation industries and academics together, to get them to work in the same direction and think in the same way, to help reduce carbon emissions and get to the Government targets of net zero by 2050. The programme is [...]

2023-02-13T13:58:17+00:00February 13th, 2023|
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TransFIRe Report: State of EDI in the UK Foundation Industries 2022

The TransFIRe EDI team have brought together a series of findings in a "State of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the UK Foundation Industries 2022" report. It is becoming increasingly apparent and widely accepted that equity, diversity and inclusion are of paramount importance in the success of any organisation or project. Yet research by UKRI has found the foundation industries to face a specific set of EDI challenges1. As a new topic to the foundation industries, there are many gaps in research, and EDI practices do not appear to be well established. The TransFIRe EDI survey set out to measure a baseline of the EDI capabilities of organisations in the foundation industries in 2022. All TransFIRe academic and industry partners were invited to participate in this survey, which consisted of 33 questions aligned to 7 major themes of common EDI interventions. The term “interventions” is used to mean any [...]

2023-02-27T15:03:50+00:00February 2nd, 2023|
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TransFIRe partner collaboration on the tiles

In the summer of last year, a range of teams from across TransFIRe began working with Zentia, a ceiling tile manufacturer in Gateshead, to develop a case study focused on reducing energy usage, capturing and reusing waste heat and exploring the use of additives and alternative product mixtures to improve the material properties of their products. Zentia’s factory produces ceiling tiles formed from a wet mixture of newsprint, starch, fibreglass and other minerals, which are then pressed and dried by passing through a long series of gas-fired ovens.  The manufacturing process generates large amounts of steam and hot air and offers significant potential for heat and water recovery projects. Initially brought into the TransFIRe programme by Professor Justin Perry and Dr Matt Unthank, Chemical Technical Working Group members from Northumbria University, to explore the use of alternative tile coatings, the engineering and management team at Zentia also expressed interest [...]

2023-02-27T15:04:46+00:00January 30th, 2023|
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Mapping energy and material flows for the foundation industries

As the costs of goods and services continue to rise and the world looks for ways to become more efficient and sustainable, an approach called Gentani is being used to help reduce waste and inefficiency.  Gentani is a Japanese word that means output level or consumption rate, but in these circumstances, it means the minimum resource you need to carry out a process. Using this approach, over the past few months TransFIRe’s Workstream 1 (WS1) have been able to map the energy and material flows at the UK level for all six of the foundation industries (cement, chemicals, ceramics, metals, plastics and paper) to identify potential opportunities for improvement and symbiosis. The researchers are also developing an approach to present the combined energy and material flows that will allow reporting data in a concise, transparent and flexible manner. The new approach has the flexibility to scale from company to [...]

2024-01-29T11:33:36+00:00January 30th, 2023|
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Getting out and about

As part of the EDI team’s activities, Mike Thakoordin, TransFIRe Post-doctoral Research Associate at Durham University, undertakes a number of site visits to companies within the foundation industries. This month has been extremely busy with several visits across the country. With each visit, as well as getting to know more about the company and its inputs and outputs, Mike looks to determine the level of awareness of EDI within the organisation, what the main challenges are, if and how they have tackled these, what the outcome of this has been and what the future plans are. Over the past few weeks visits have been made to Tandom, a specialist metals recycling company, Breedon Cement, Almath Crucibles, the Materials Processing Institute (online) and Constellium. Each organisation has its own unique approach to EDI and set of plans, some with little activity and others with some impressive ideas and ways of [...]

2023-02-01T10:44:27+00:00January 26th, 2023|
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