Mapeamento do gerenciamento das areias a verde de fundição no estado do Paraná sob a ótica da produção mais limpa: uma contribuição para o estabelecimento de estratégias

Abstract

The environmental issue has been occupying more space on the national scene. The increasing stringency of the laws makes this thematic focus of great attention. In this context, the foundry appears as a great recycler to use recycled material as raw material in their processes, but at the same time has a low environmental performance because it is a huge consumer of mineral resources and also because of the waste it generates. Among this waste, the foundry sand waste is one of the biggest problems concerning the management of waste from the foundry industry. Beyond the theoretical base on foundry, the approach of this study involved aspects of environmental legislation, development of standards specific to the foundry sand through the ABNT CB-59, concepts and environmental management systems (ISO 14001, Industrial Ecology and Cleaner Poduction) searching to analyze the foundry green sand management in the state of Paraná, with a view to establishing future strategies for the sector. To achieve this goal we carried out a survey of the foundry sector across the Parana and identified the companies using the foundry green sand, was diagnosed on the basis of Cleaner Production, the current situation of management of these materials and projected a future scenario of using the technique of molding sand green. The study showed that the management practices of the green sands encompassed three levels of action of Cleaner Production, the use of this material is still interesting to the foundries under the economic aspect and it probably won't be completely replaced. The main goals of the foundries are the expansion of productive capacity and improving product quality. Difficulties have been identified and highlighted the points where there is need for investment and improvements involving organizational and technological levels of companies surveyed. The study also revealed conflicting data between the total generation of discarded foundry sands informed by companies and the estimative based on the input data, leaving it unclear as to the fate of a large part of this material. Therefore, the approach and results of survey showed its relevance to the foundry industry in the State of Paraná, contributing to a better understanding of the green sand management and giving subsidies to the establishment of future strategies.