Abstract
Since many years, the world has come together to face the challenge regarding the energy consumption and energy efficiency problems. In order to achieve and overcome these challenges, researchers have been focused on one of the most energy demanding sector worldwide which is the Industrial sectors and more specifically the Foundry. South Africa being one of the countries having the cheapest price of electricity and has brought a misusage of electricity and thus brought inefficiency in the industries and increase of prices in foundries. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance and impact of oxygen gas in the creation of a foaming slag during the melting process induction furnace (IF). Results have ! shown an optimum of oxygen gas injection of 100ml/sec and from 50 to 42 min which is a gain of almost 12 min in time (21% - 23.5%) and electrical energy consumption from 18.41kWh to 13.93kWh have been reduced to 2.56%. The thickness of slag foam increases from 0.2 - 0.9 cm during the experimental process and decreases the temperature on the surface of the foaming slag from 912°C to 878°C. As such, a simple heat transfer modelling and calculation have been conducted to see the impact and the relation between the heat loss and the foaming slag and result as shown that the heat saving was made from 9.1 - 9.2%.