How heat exchange technology minimizes airborne sand
In September 2022, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it would be stepping up enforcement of its existing workplace health safety standards – specifically, high-emphasis hazards such as exposure to crystalline silica dust in the workplace.
As part of a two-part series in Foundry Management & Technology magazine, Scott Harris, Regional Director, Americas at Solex Thermal Science looked at how this enhanced oversight is forcing metalcasters to take a closer look at the technologies now in place in their foundries, and deciding whether the current capabilities for addressing airborne particulates are either helping or hurting their efforts to meet those regulations.
In Part 1, Harris addressed how some direct-contact temperature control methods, such as foundry sand fluid-bed heaters and coolers, are contributing to the challenge of mitigating personnel exposure to respirable crystalline silica in the workplace.
In Part 2 released in the March 2023 issue, Harris examines how indirect sand conditioning solutions such as plate-based moving-bed heat exchangers (MBHEs) are providing a more effective answer not only for mitigating silica exposure but also for addressing a developing need for better energy-consumption management.
Included within the article, Harris notes Solex's recent collaboration with Benton Foundry as it began an expansion program aimed at to doubling its coremaking capacity from 5,000 to 10,000 tons of cores annually.
Vital to Benton was that the sand condition solution aligned with several other dust-control and energy-management initiatives at the foundry. The result was a customized, pillow-plate MBHE commissioned in mid-2022 that has proven to be a “unit of choice,” according to Benton officials.
This entry was tagged Heating, Cooling and last updated on 2023-3-10
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