The potential application of red mud in the production of castings

The bauxite industry in Jamaica is the third largest producer of alumina in the world. Because of the technological method of processing the bauxite, there is a large amount of the world's red mud residue being disposed in Jamaica. The magnitude of the industry's production of alumina and the red mud disposal problem as a by-product is of the same order.This research was conducted to investigate the feasibility of using a mixture of red mud and the traditional silica sand to produce quality-casting component.The porosity of the aluminium specimens obtained from the red mud castings showed that porosity increased up to two-fold, depending on the ratio of sand and red mud. For applications where optimum casting strength is important, the use of 100% red mud may be unsatisfactory.Although there are other variables that affect the quality of the mixture of silica sand and red mud mould in castings, the result is very significant given the possibility of applying portions of red mud in other casting techniques.