Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Abstract:
The use of clay in industries as related to heavy castings could not produce cores of adequate strength therefore other alternatives are cereal substances which are widely used in the steel foundry as binders or as additions to core and molding sands. In that connection, an investigation was carried out to determine and compare the foundry properties of cassava starch and oils as binders. Cassava starch without oil showed a maximum tensile strength of 311KN/m2 at a baking time of 2hours but, with the addition of oils such as soya beans, cotton seed and groundnut, there was a tremendous improvement in the baked strength up to a maximum of 863KN/m2. This is important because of the growing technology of heavy duty machines of our time. Considering the oils used: soya bean, cotton seed and groundnut, the casting characteristics of soya bean with cassava prove more superior to the others. With this new discovery, local foundries can look to solving the problems of their spare parts production from iron and steel particularly rail and automobile industries

Keywords: cassava starch, soya bean oil, core, binder and foundry.

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