Innovative Melting Techniques for Sustainable Energy Conservation in Iron Foundries

This paper is aimed to study the energy consumption in Indian Ferrous Foundries and to investigate measures for energy conservation. The natural sources of energy coal, oil, gas etc. are depleting fast. As per the survey conducted and reports published by several National& International agencies, the energy consumption in Indian ferrous foundries is much more above the required limits and has to be drastically reduced. This paper deals with LDO fired rotary furnace. The author conducted a series of experimental investigations on the self-designed and developed ,rotary furnaces, installed at S.Harbhajan Singh Namdhari Enterprises industrial estate, Nunihai, Agra for production of cylinder heads and auto parts, and at Faculty of Engineering, Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI), Dayalbagh, Agra (a self-deemed university.) These experimental investigations on the rotary furnaces produced excellent results, which are accrued here in. The experimental investigations revealed that by oxygen enrichment of the preheated air, the specific fuel consumption reduced by 49.87% and energy consumption by 47.14%.