Foundries
Platform automation, complete industrial air filtration from charge door to shakeout, designed to protect workers, meet emission limits, and keep your foundry running at peak efficiency.
Common things to know
Answers to the most common questions about foundry dust collection and platform automation.
Last updated: June 2026
The Challenge
Foundries and smelters generate some of the most challenging dust and fume conditions in industry: high-temperature particulate from furnace operations, heavy metal aerosols, acidic gases, and fine silica from shakeout and sand handling. Without proper industrial dust collection, these contaminants threaten worker health, damage equipment, and put regulatory compliance at risk.
Nederman MikroPul delivers complete foundry dust collection systems, engineered from the capture hood to the clean-air outlet, covering every process point so you never have an uncontrolled emission source.
"We design complete dust and fume extraction solutions from the start to the finish of your foundry process, keeping operating and maintenance costs to a minimum while ensuring safe, clean, and efficient production."
Powered by the Nederman Insight cloud platform, MikroPul-Assist gives you real-time visibility into every critical dust collector parameter from any device, anywhere. Expert technical staff review your system data and provide regular status reports, with proactive recommendations before problems develop.
Differential Pressure (ΔP)
Hopper Level Indicators
Filter Leak Detection
Email Alarm Notifications
Applications
Every furnace type presents distinct extraction challenges. Our engineers specify the right capture technology, filter media, and system design for each application.
High-temperature, high-volume gas streams requiring pre-cooling and robust bag filtration. Complete hood, spark arrestor, cooler, and baghouse systems.
Lower gas temperatures allow direct fabric filtration. System designs cover both primary process fumes and building ventilation capture.
Hydraulic induction furnace hoods capture fine metal fumes during melting and tapping. High collection velocity required for fine sub-micron particles.
High dust loads from knockout and sand conveyors. Robust collectors with high air-to-cloth ratios handle peak surge volumes during mould shake cycles.
Compact dust collectors for grinding, fettling, and shot-blast operations. Self-cleaning filters keep equipment running without manual intervention.
Dust Collection Products
Every system is engineered to the specific gas volume, temperature, dust type, and regulatory requirements of your facility.
Foundry Automation
Beyond dust collection, Nederman MikroPul offers a range of foundry automation technologies that reduce manual labour, lower energy consumption, and improve casting quality — all while integrating directly with your filtration and exhaust control systems.
These automation solutions are designed specifically for the foundry environment: high heat, harsh conditions, and continuous production cycles where downtime costs are high and operator safety is paramount.
Jet Hood and Smart Exhaust Control combine phase-optimised hood aerodynamics with automated, demand-based airflow regulation. The system continuously adjusts fan speed to match the actual extraction requirement at each phase of the furnace cycle — maximising capture efficiency while minimising energy use.
Octoslag is a fully automatic slag cleaning system that removes slag from the furnace with near-complete elimination of manual operator work. Remote operation from a safe, air-conditioned cabin removes workers from the hazardous furnace proximity zone entirely.
The Automated Alloying Station automates key dosing steps by integrating scrap and ferro-alloy charging with recipe control. Precise, repeatable dosing supports consistent melt chemistry and reduces alloy waste — with every charge recorded for quality traceability.
Why Nederman MikroPul
Our systems are purpose-engineered for heavy industrial air filtration — not adapted from lighter-duty designs. That difference shows in reliability, bag life, and total cost of ownership.
Protect employees from toxic fumes, respirable silica, and heavy metal particulate. Achieve TLV compliance at every workstation.
Meet or exceed EPA, IED, and local authority emission limits. Documented performance data simplifies permit renewals and authority approvals.
Energy-efficient fan sizing, long bag life, and minimal scheduled downtime keep operating costs low across the system lifetime.
Up to 40% space savings compared to typical baghouses.
Part of the Nederman global clean-air network. Local service engineers, spare parts availability, and 24/7 remote support worldwide.
Every system is engineered to your specific process. We conduct on-site assessments and profitability calculations before proposing a design.
Pulse-jet baghouse dust collectors are the most common dust collectors in foundries. However, Nederman MikroPul's FS flat-bag dust collector has advantages over the traditional pulse jet in the foundry industry for example adding up to 40% space savings over traditional baghouses while maintaining collection efficiencies above 99.9% and removing the need for compressed air. The optimal system depends on your specific furnace type, gas temperature, dust characterization, and space constraints. Our engineers will assess these before recommending a design.
Cupola furnace fume control requires a dedicated hood capture system at the furnace mouth combined with a high-temperature baghouse. For hot-blast cupolas, gas cooling (heat exchanger) is typically required before fabric filtration to protect the filter bags. Cold-blast cupolas can often feed directly to the collector. Nederman MikroPul designs complete systems including capture hoods, ductwork, gas coolers, and dust collectors — all engineered to meet your local emission permit limits.
Foundries and smelters face regulation of particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10), heavy metals (lead, cadmium, chromium, nickel), dioxins/furans, and acid gases (HCl, SO₂, HF). In the US, EPA NESHAP standards (40 CFR Part 63) set limits for iron and steel foundries and state-level permits add site-specific requirements. In Europe, the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) and its associated Best Available Techniques Reference Documents (BREFs) govern foundry emissions. Nederman MikroPul systems are engineered to meet or exceed these requirements.
Foundry platform automation refers to the integration of automated systems across the key process stages of a foundry (melting, slag removal, alloy charging, exhaust control, and filtration monitoring) replacing manual tasks with controlled, repeatable machine operations. Nederman MikroPul's foundry automation platform includes: the Octoslag automated slag removal system; the Automated Alloying Station (AAS) for precise ferro-alloy and scrap charging; Jet Hood & Smart Exhaust Control (SEC) for demand-based airflow regulation; and MikroPul-Assist remote monitoring for dust collection systems. These solutions can be deployed individually or as an integrated platform connected to your existing process controls.
Smart Exhaust Control (SEC) delivers average energy savings of more than 30% compared to fixed-speed fan operation. The system achieves this by continuously adjusting fan airflow to match the actual extraction demand at each phase of the furnace cycle — reducing speed and power draw during low-emission phases such as charging, and increasing flow during high-emission phases such as tapping or slagging. Because fan power consumption scales with the cube of fan speed, even modest speed reductions produce significant energy savings. SEC is typically combined with a Jet Hood system for optimised capture aerodynamics.
Octoslag is a fully automatic slag cleaning system designed to remove slag from the furnace with near-complete elimination of manual operator work at the furnace face. The system is operated remotely from a safe, air-conditioned control cabin, removing workers from the hazardous zone around the furnace — eliminating exposure to heat, molten metal splash, and toxic fumes during the slag removal phase. Additional operational benefits include faster slag removal due to a more controlled process, reduced furnace heat loss (shorter open-furnace time), and simplified extraction duct design allowing a more compact installation footprint.
Long-Term Partnership
The Nederman Group provides long-term partnership support from initial concept through operational optimization — protecting availability and compliance across multi-decade foundry assets.
Pre-studies, profitability calculations and detailed planning to define the right concept for your foundry.
Construction, installation and commissioning of complete systems.
Maintenance, troubleshooting and on-call service to keep equipment running.
Continuous monitoring of key parameters, to provide early warnings and prevent unplanned downtime.
Performance upgrades, retrofits and extensions as capacity or regulatory requirements change.
Connect with Nederman MikroPul for foundry dust collection and automation solutions.
Protecting People, Uptime, Performance and Casting Quality with Nederman MikroPul. Thousands of Foundry Installations Worldwide | More Than 100 Years of Expertise
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