Since the end of the 20th century, with the progress of science and technology and the development of national economy, the foundry industry has been widely used and developed rapidly because of its strong adaptability and low cost. According to the survey data, China’s annual output of castings in 2009 was about 34 million tons, which is equivalent to the sum of the annual output of the United States, India, Japan and Russia, which ranked second to fifth, accounting for about one third of the world’s total annual output. In 2011, with the proposal of the 12th Five Year Plan, China’s foundry industry developed more rapidly, and the annual output of foundry increased steadily, reaching a “stable” development (the growth rate difference within four years is no more than 5%). According to the relevant statistics of the foundry industry carried out by the Foundry Society nationwide, the data show that the annual output of foundry in China has exceeded 45 million tons, the total output value is about 750 billion yuan, there are about 26000 foundry sites and more than 1.2 million employees. China has become the largest foundry country worthy of the name.
Nevertheless, the average scale of China’s casting output is relatively small, and it is not a strong casting country. At present, there are some shortcomings in the development of China’s foundry industry: many precision castings, such as engine cylinder and light alloy die castings, cannot be produced independently and need to rely on foreign technology or even direct import; Compared with foreign products, the quality is poor and the waste rate of production is high; The automation level of production links is low, energy consumption is high, and environmental pollution is large. Therefore, comparing the foundry industry between China and other developed countries in the world, we can find that there is still a gap that can not be ignored in process technology, management level, equipment and facilities, actual production scale and production efficiency, follow-up environmental governance and so on.
Due to the serious pollution in the foundry industry, the production of a ton of castings will emit about 50 kg of dust, thousands of cubic meters of waste gas, tons of waste sand and 300 kg waste residue. The characteristics of heavy pollution and poor production environment in the foundry industry have also caused the lack of relevant professionals to a certain extent, which seriously restricts the development of China’s casting industry.
Since entering the new century, China has always taken environmental protection and resource conservation as the basic national policy. While protecting the ecological environment, China has developed circular economy and accelerated the construction of a resource-saving and environment-friendly society. Therefore, the development of China’s foundry industry should always be highly consistent with China’s current economic development system, adhere to clean development, improve production safety and achieve sustainable development. In the future, the development of China’s casting industry will mainly focus on saving energy and materials, reducing environmental pollution, improving casting accuracy, reducing casting defect rate and developing new special casting processes.