The PrEco Cup

Today NovaCast is launching its revolutionary new Tellurium free cup at GIFA in Düsseldorf.

NovaCast has developed a revolutionary new tellurium free cup, the PrEco (Precision Ecological) cup, which provides a safer work environment for the operators at the same time as it produces the necessary information much faster. As a bonus, the sample can be used for the spectrometer as well and can be recycled straight back into the melt. “This is an important proof point in showing our commitment to help the foundry industry reduce its environmental footprint” says Håkan Fransson, CEO at NovaCast. He continues: “This is only the beginning. NovaCast will continue to take action to reduce the use of harmful substances and scarse resources.”

Tellurium is a harmful substance that is being used in measurement cups to be able to extract chemical data from the sample of the melt. When the melt is poured into the cup, Tellurium vaporizes contaminating the surrounding air where workers will breathe in some of the harmful substance. “- In the long run this creates an unsafe work environment and with our PrEco cup we have proven that Tellurium is not necessary” explains Per-Eric Persson, Technical Manager and responsible for the PrEco cup project at NovaCast. “- Samples made with cups containing Tellurium should not be recycled since they may contaminate the melt, it will create defects such as degenerated graphite and micro porosities.”

Per-Eric continues: – As part of our long-term commitment to constantly find the most responsible way of doing business, we turned our attention to our cups. We decided to look at it unconditionally and came to the conclusion that since the cup is a consumable the best thing would be to have no cup at all, and that is how we arrived at our No Cup-vision. We are not there yet, but one day we will be. On our way to eliminate the cup completely, we have started eliminating the harmful substances from the cup. As Tellurium is the biggest culprit we just knew it had to go! The determination and momentum from that realization was fruitful and that is why we today are very proud to present our PrEco cup.