Chip Compacting : Making the Best out of Waste

The country’s manufacturing sector is constantly on the lookout for ways to minimise waste streams and maximise its cost savings. Chip compacting could be a major step towards industrial waste management for reducing national loss and contributing to sustainability.

It is a point to ponder that despite no dearth of commitment, our leaders are still far from providing a large part of our country the basics such as clean drinking water, good roads and uninterrupted electricity.

What we fall short of is the resources, which can be saved if all resolve to participate and contribute. Our industry leaders, economists, leaders, bureaucrats and experts often present the excellent solution of 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. If practised with zeal and commitment, it guarantees saving in terms of money, materials and labor, which, in turn, can be effectively used as the means for fulfilling the above basic needs.There is a fourth R – Responsibility, which means a measured accountability that should start from top and percolate down.

Wastage in Manufacturing

In the current scene of the Metal Cutting Industries - Tiny, Small, Medium and Large - of our country, a huge wastage is happening unabated. There lies an enormous potential of tapping big benefits out of the waste if certain issues are controlled.

Machine Tools and Equipment, Automobile, Tractors, Aircraft, Heavy Electricals, Defence Production, Railways, Motors, Engines, Engineering, and Ancillary Industries are where large scale continuous machining happens. And in the process of machining, metal chips are generated. By a safe estimate, the quantity of chips generated in India is to the tune of 15-20 lakh tons per year. These chips are of cast iron, steel, aluminum, copper, brass, bronze, titanium, and silver etc, and are of different sizes and shapes. This is not treated as metal but just scrap.

Resorting to right measures

The agony is that approximately one fourth of the chips of the cheaper metals such as cast iron and steel are not recycled at all and allowed to pollute the environment. What is recycled is not done efficiently. Metal chips are injury prone for handling and transport, yield more slag and less metal, and consume more energy and labor. The coolant carried by chips burn in the furnace giving thick fumes, leading to pollution and wastage.

Aluminum chips if compacted into briquettes and melted will yield a neat 15 percent more in comparison to melting loose chips.

The logic is simple:

• Loose chips have several hundred times more surface area exposed to air and heat in comparison to briquetted chips.

• A large amount of coolant which is cutting oil, neat to 5 percent solution in water, which is otherwise carried by the chips, is expelled and saved during compacting into briquettes. Almost 95 percent of smoke and fumes are eliminated by briquetting.

• Briquettes get immersed in the molten metal (chips float) making efficient heat transfer and less energy consumption. The extra yield alone will take care of the cost of compacting.

Loss that can be saved

In a nutshell, there is a huge national loss of 4-5 lakh tons of metals of different types every year just because the generated chips are not recycled the right way. Starting from mining, transporting, smelting and processing, to making it ready for use, approximately `4000 crore is the amount of money is spent into making them, which adds to the loss.

Author

A Bhaskaran
Ex-General Manager
HMT Machine Tools Ltd & Yuken India Ltd
alakkil.bhaskaran@gmail.com

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