CPT International 03/2016

K INTERVIEW
“Replacing equipment and simulation
improves quality automatically”
Manuel Bosse is environmental and energy management expert of the BDG-Service GmbH in
Düsseldorf, Germany. He played an instrumental role in EffSAFound 2 , a joint German-South
African project dedicated to improve energy and resource efficiency in South African foundries
Photo: BDG/Soschinski
South African foundries have to cope
with high scrap rates and their energy
use is often very inefficient. What
was your impression of the situation
during your visits to South Africa and
what has EffSAFound achieved in this
respect?
Until 2008, the foundries in South Africa
had benefited very much from low
energy prices. Between 2008 and 2011,
the utility company Eskom raised the
electricity price every year by 20 %. At
the same time, the foundries were required
to reduce electricity consumption
by 10 %. The melting furnaces and
molding equipment in the foundries
are quite old. Power consumption had
never been an issue. Furnaces used to
be operated without closing the covers
and the practice of ladle preheating was
the exception and, if practiced at all, it
was done by means of molten metal. 95
% of the furnaces in South Africa are
powered by electricity. All of a sudden,
foundry operators were faced with the
situation that they had to save energy.
Since 2010, there has been a rise in investments
in modern equipment. This
perfectly coincided with our joint project,
which was kicked off in May 2013.
Energy and material efficiency were exactly
our areas of focus. When foundries
replace their obsolete equipment or
start to simulate their processes, quality
will improve automatically. Since
2013/2014, also the issue of material
efficiency has been moving in the focus
of attention. It had been common
practice to simply dump used foundry
sands, but the foundries were faced
with constantly increasing dumping
costs. We made the foundry operators
aware of the possibility of recycling the
sands 30 or even 40 times. We did this
by presenting suitable products and explaining
that the efficient use of material
and energy also provides economic
advantages. The local foundries are
very much under pressure: Since 2005,
the number of foundries has shrunk
from 270 to 170, due to cheap castings
from China sold on the South African
market.
The skills of personnel in South African
foundries leave much to be desired.
Has EffSAFound been able to
render support in this respect?
According to a survey 70 % of the people
working in South African foundries
have never gone to school or only
have basic education. This makes
training and further education very
difficult. One has to resort to illustrations
and videos to train the people.
Only 25% have a school-leaving certificate.
Those are usually the supervisors.
They do their best to train the
workers, but it’s a hard job. And, finally,
there is a 5% with a university graduation.
Those hold the managing positions
in the foundries. Since 2010, all
institutions in South Africa related to
the foundry industry have been joining
forces to promote education in the
foundries. For example, the University
of Johannesburg has set up a programme
dedicated to bringing more
coloured and black people into management
positions. For example, all
engineers graduating from the University
of Johannesburg have spent a
semester at a foreign university, for instance
in Freiberg, Germany, and more
and more of them occupy leading positions
in South African foundries. In
order to train those 25 % of the workers
with a school-leaving certificate,
the German Society for International
6 Casting Plant & Technology 3 /2016