A bespoke carbon footprint framework to set the path towards Net Zero in foundries

A bespoke carbon footprint framework for the metal casting industry is presented to enable swifter carbon accounting of foundries and identify energy and carbon footprint hotspots to support the drive towards Net Zero goals. Many manufacturing enterprises in the United Kingdom and Europe are already struggling to maintain financial competitiveness as well as drive towards a sustainable shift, particularly SMEs. This framework is to help alleviate the pressure on the industry by providing an outside tool to direct companies to sustainable solutions. This paper validates such framework breaking down the environmental footprint of ferrous products through energy and material profiles of sand casting processes in two real UK foundries identified as “A” and “B”. During environmental visits, it was established that Foundry A emitted an average of 41700 tons of CO2 annually and Foundry B 1400 tons. The framework developed to estimate the melting process energy (to be, then, converted into carbon footprint) predicted with about 15% accuracy the actual data. Furthermore, the framework can be expanded and improved on for its accuracy and into other processes within the casting process including melting, core and mould making, pouring sand reclamation, ancillaries and fettling.