EXPLORING THE POTENTIALS OF MANGO HUSKS AND SEEDS TO DEVELOP NEW ADDITIVES FOR GREEN SAND MOULDING

Foundry Sand for green mould making must be carefully prepared to meet certain basic requirements or properties, such as permeability, green strength, dry strength, refractoriness, cohesiveness, thermal stability etc. but this cannot be achieved without the application of desirable additives which play a very important role for enhancing the above specified properties of the green sand mould. Other qualities that can be improved withthe aid of selection of good additives aredryness shear strength, green shear strength and green compression strength. Therefore, the researchers presumed that mango seeds and its husks if further explored will give a good fibrous and reducing agent additives (substance) that can be developed from such agricultural byproducts obtained from Kaura Namoda, Zamfara state which is also clean and non-toxic. It was discovered that, newly developed additives can be easily applied locally in the foundry industries. This was proven by forming three different moulds, one was made using naturally bonded sand and the other two were made from the synthetic sand prepared Mango husks and its seeds powder. The three specimens marked A, B and C were compared in terms of bonding ability which indicates the ability of the mango husks and its seeds powder to serve as fibrous and reducing agent additive make good impacts on both the mould and the cast. Immediate macro-graphic examination was carried out to study the variation of the samples from each specimen; after machining, the samples were subjected to hardness and wear tests and it showedthat each or individual sample vary in both hardness and wear test results and also micrographic structure of the sample varied. Therefore, it showed that Mango husk and its seed powder have no adverse effect on the cast product, and can be used in green sand moulding where the conventional additives are not available.