Effect of Graphene Used as Filler in Organic Binder During the Cold Box Process

摘要

One of the processes more widely used for sand cores making is based in mixtures of silica sand and organic binder which is known as Cold Box process (CB). This binder is a polyurethane. It is well known that most polymers can be filled with nanoparticles to enhance some properties, in this work several trials have been done to fill the polyurethane matrix using graphene to make a nanocomposite binder. This nanocomposite could improve mechanical resistance and thermal conductivity of the sand cores. The nanoparticle dispersion was done by horn sonication at controlled temperature. In addition, hot distortion test, thermogravimetry, FT-ER. and Scanning Electron Microscopy were used to identify the nanoparticle morphology.