What about a concept of Green Foundries?

There is very little information available, but we can discuss here, what may be the necessary rooms for improvement to establish a demonstration purpose foundry, which is energy efficient and environment friendly as well? 

There is room in the material handling department to reduce energy. Speaking as a vibratory equipment supplier, there is significant energy saved when you utilize two mass vibratory equipment over direct drive style designs.

Two-Mass refers to a style of vibratory equipment where one mass (an exciter) is used to drive a second mass (trough). The exciter mass typically contains a motor and is connected to a trough using a combination of springs. Combining the two masses and the springs, a resonant frequency can be calculated. When the operating frequency of the motor is close to this calculated natural frequency, the resonance that takes place within the system requires significantly less horsepower to achieve the same amount of work as a single mass (direct drive or "brute force") system. The closer the frequency to the operating speed, the less horsepower required. 

There are also ways of having the equipment work for you to regenerate a portion of the electricity consumed. Regenerative Drives have the capability of taking power produced by the motor during braking and putting it back into the power lines. Most VFDs have the ability of converting AC power from the motor into DC power. This is usually dissipated with braking resistors (Dynamic Braking). The braking energy is reused, not wasted as heat as it would be with dynamic braking.

 Those are just two ideas to start the discussion...

One thing stands out in my mind. There was a fabricator at a plant I worked for 18 yrs.,smart fellow! As we started to build a new foundry/machine shop I can still hear him repeatedly say "bury a large pipe/conduit underground". Bob M. would say what seemed to complaning, that we are wasting money on air make-up, all the duct piping we are running across the ceiling is useless, if your trying to cool a foundry! His point being the ground is allways cool, use it to your advantage! Another thought is to use closed loop chillers as radient floor heat off season. Can a effecient heat exchanger be designed cost effectively, to use the heat out of your furnace stack to heat foundrys in northern climates? Brain-storm people! Throw out your off-the-wall ideas. Somebody may make sense of the ideas "you have" or heard.

This site is not a read only site! participate!

Great topic!

I think the first step is to look at all the ways we can conserve energy.  Using sensored lighting in areas of the plant that do not see a lot of traffic is a good way to reduce energy use.  Improving material handling is certainly a great area.  Then there is improving melting efficiency.

The second step might be looking at how to use current technologies to help us be greener.  For instance, many people do not think houses with solar panel roofs are beautiful.  But, I have never heard of anyone refer to a foundry building as beautiful. ...Well, maybe I have, but I'm weird. ....We could place solar panels on our roofs to help generate electricity that can go back onto the grid.  I think most foundries have the technical know how to manage a solar system.  The other approach you could have is to rent some of your land to a company that wants to locate a wind generator in your area.  That would help the environment and improve the bottom line. 

You may want to take a look around on this website:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/industry/saveenergynow/

I ran across it earlier in the week - hope its helpful. 

Here is another article that some may find interesting: 

Regulatory Obstacles In Way Of Waste Heat For Electric Power

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/005165.html 

Below ground heating and cooling is used in the Midwest, I have only seen it done on residential homes. What is done is a grid of piping is placed under ground below the frost level. One thing that would concern me on this would be the conduit becoming plugged with sand.

I have used the heated water from water cooling systems coming off the induction furnaces to heat air coming in a makeup air unit.

That's a clever proposal, with a lot of potential implications. I wouldn't be surprised to learn a lot of people have had similar ideas.