Recycling of Municipal and Industrial Solid Waste

The cost to the United States foundry industry to landfill the 12 billion pounds of spent sand and 4 billion pounds of process residual fines is approaching $300 million per year. The foundry industry has spent considerable effort on recycling the spent foundry sand that originally was used to produce molds in which the ferrous and nonferrous (primarily aluminum) parts were produced. However, there currently are no recycling alternatives for the fines recovered from dust collectors, and this material is disposed of in landfills at significant environmental and economic burden to the United States.One approach to removing this burden is to use a combination of foundry industry fines with plastics to produce composite parts with value. Preliminary experiments show that efficacious binders for foundry industry fines may include virgin or recycled thermoplastics. Resource Recovery Corporation of West Michigan's Phase I research will expand on these preliminary investigations to establish the most efficient and cost-effective binders. Furthermore, useful portions of the foundry industry fines will be identified and separated for characterization and classification purposes. Inorganic-organic composites test coupons will be formed and tested against part specifications.