Material Conservation
Waste Management
RWF, being the biggest recycler of scrap (especially rejected wheels, axles, rails etc) has further taken a number of initiatives for material conservation, which besides conservation of resources, has also led to significant saving to Railway by way of cost reduction. Some of the efforts are as follows:
Natural Resource Conservation
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Reduction in MgO C Bricks consumption through reuse of reclaimed bricks for furnace lining and maintaining basicity of bath in range 2 - 2.5
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Reduction in consumption of Fused silica powder, Veegum Granules etc by utilizing the left out spray solution at the week-end for next working day without draining.
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Usage of Graphite dust, ingate sleeves and clay graphite stopper in Furnaces instead of dumping
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Graphite powder generated from machining of mould blanks is re-used in Furnaces at Steel Melting Shop to manage carbon % in metal. About 250 MT/yr
yy All RWF products are fully Recyclable except HDPE end cover and bolts which are reusable. yy Innovating ways adopted to further reduce packaging materials for wheel-sets by using alternate methods like bulk packaging.
Foundry Sand is an important consumable in the process of wheel casting. A thermal sand reclamation plant of capacity 2MT/ hr commissioned in March’2021 to recover used baked sand. The reclamation plant operates on PNG. It recovers 90% of the sand charged. About 6600 MT of sand has been reclaimed in till November 2021. This has. yy Conservation of natural resource as more than 90% of used sand is recovered and the same sand can be re-used at 10% loss each time. yy Avoiding land pollution by avoiding dumping used resin coated sand into yard. yy Drastic reduction in purchase of fresh sand annual cost savings. yy Reduction in pollution, greenhouse gas emissions due to reduced requirement of transporting fresh sand.
Contact: Mr. N.K. Barnawal, Chief Work Shop Engineer (Wheel) & Chief Environment Officer, Yelahanka, Bangalore, Karnataka Phone: +9108501401 | Email: cwe.wheel@rwf.railnet.gov.in 44
