THE FOUNDRY SAND CYCLE: AN EXAMPLE OF A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

April 26, 2022

In the collective imagination, in a post-apocalyptic scenario, of what in English are defined as “ industrial wasteland ”, the skyline of smoking chimneys is omnipresent, a now dated symbol of an industrial past. Heavy industry, which has been given much of the responsibility for global warming since its development in the eighteenth century, is often considered synonymous with pollution and environmental degradation. But are we really sure that this is still the case?

THE SAND LIFE CYCLE

Like any other production sector, large industry is also adapting to the new paradigm of ecological transition, mitigating where possible its side effects on the quality of the environment in which it operates. Take, as an example, the metallurgical foundries and the sands used there to make the molds into which the molten metal is poured, which are then destroyed to extract the product itself. Even if most of the sands are reused internally to create new shapes, a portion in excess of that recovered must be discarded, and therefore leaves the production cycle as exhausted .

However, this material can have a second life and be reused, as an alternative to the use of virgin raw materials, by industrial processes that use natural aggregates. These include the production of cement, ceramics, glass, conglomerates for construction, bituminous conglomerates, bricks and bricks or the construction of embankments and road foundations. Through regeneration processes that mitigate the consumption of resources and the emission of carbon it is possible to obtain a material similar if not superior to the virgin one and thus limit the introduction of new material into the production cycle, favoring instead the logic of circularity.