Implementation of Metal Casting Best Practices - EERE - U.S. ...

3. ITP-Industry Partnership Efforts: Energy Efficiency and Best
Practices
Everyday tasks such as turning on a light, starting a car, or using a computer would not have
been possible without metal casting. The metal casting industry has been integral to U.S. growth
and has helped the U.S. become the world benchmark in fields such as manufacturing, science,
medicine, and aerospace. The industry is diverse, employing a variety of casting processes and
alloys. Since the majority of metal casters are small businesses, they lack the resources to
perform high-risk, high-impact research on their own. Instead, they participate in research
consortia and public-private partnerships. These collaborations are proving to be successful
methods for performing research for the industry overall.
The Metal Casting R&D initiative supports these partnerships by providing cost-shared R&D
funding to improve the energy intensity of the metal casting industry. These partnerships are
encouraged by ITP Metal Casting in collaboration with the CMC. The ITP Metal Casting
portfolio emphasizes university-based research, tapping the technical and knowledge resource of
our nation’s educational institutions and encouraging young students to enter the industry.
Furthermore, the partnership encourages strong industry involvement to ensure direct application
of research results and provides evidence as to the importance of cost-shared research
partnerships.
ITP also provides a variety of free software tools and services through its BestPractices initiative
to help metal casters reduce their energy consumption within the near term at little or no cost.
Metal casters can use these tools and services to assess their process heating operations (melting,
holding, and heat treatment), compressed air systems, motor systems, and other operations to
identify energy-saving opportunities. These tools and services have a proven track record of
helping metal casters identify no- and low-cost practices, retrofits, and upgrades to existing
processes to save energy and money.
The ITP-funded energy efficiency R&D technologies and BestPractices tools and services
beneficial to metal casters are described below.
3.1 R&D of Energy-Efficient Technologies
The Metal Casting R&D strategy is designed to encourage government-industry partnership in
the energy-intensive metal casting industry. This strategy fostered industry partnerships, such as
CMC, and created the driving force for the industry to develop long-term visions and roadmaps.
The vision documents assist in developing goals for the future of the casting industry, while
roadmaps provide an outline of the R&D needed to achieve the vision goals. The ITP Metal
Casting Vision and Roadmap documents, along with in-depth analysis of energy use in the
industry, form the basis for open and competitive solicitations for pre-competitive R&D that
addresses both the energy efficiency goals outlined in the National Energy Policy, as well as
industry research priorities.
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