• Ajibola, Olawale Olarewaju

Abstract

The research work is carried out to provide an insight to the vast availability of quality and quantity of quarry sands which can bemined for use as foundry sand by the numerous cottage aluminium industries in Nigeria. Four sand deposits (Ado road, Abo road,Owo road and Oda road) were mapped out from Akure in Ondo states, South-western Nigeria. The physical and chemical propertieswere determined as the bases for evaluation. Abo and Ado roads sand samples have well sorted grain sizes while Oda and Owo roadhave coarse grains size. The four selected sand samples have positive liquid limit that ranged from 3.0- 17 while only Ado road sandsamples have positive values of liquid limit 5.4%; plastic limit 5.86%; plasticity index of 0.46% and shrinkage limit of 2.14%. ThepH of the subsoil varies from 5.0 to 7.0 indicating that the subsoil is acidic. While the pH of the topsoil ranges from slightly acidicpH = 5.7 to highly basic pH = 8.1. The presence of macronutrients such as Ca, Na, Mg, and K in most of the sand samples fallswithin acceptable limits. Three of the selected sand deposits (Abo, Ado road, and Oda road) will be found suitable for aluminiumcasting, though all the four sand can be used for ferrous materials (steel and cast iron). Oda and Owo road have coarse grain sizesmaking them very useful in moulding sands in the metal foundries and cement block making.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• polymer
• grain
• grain size
• aluminium
• steel
• aluminium alloy
• cement
• casting
• iron
• plasticity
• cast iron