[smw]

Hello,

I am planning to use a recipe for bonded sand used to cast metal.

The basic recipe for K-BOND is
100 lb. of very fine silica sand (100 to 150 GFN)
6 - 7 lb. of Bentone Organoclay (clay that mixes with oil instead of water)
3 lb. of Polybutene
0.10 to 0.20 lb. of Propylene Carbonate

The Propylene Carbonate is difficult to find and expensive.
Some recipes say that it is OK to substitute Propylene Carbonate with Methanol or Isopropanol.
I have read that the Propylene Carbonate is a catalyst, but I don't know.

I don't know enough about chemistry to evaluate the substitution and hope someone here that knows chemistry can advise.

One thing that I have read is that Propylene Carbonate has a high boiling temperature.
This sand mixture will be exposed to heat above 100F in storage so I am wondering if they chose that instead of Methanol or Isopropanol to prevent it from evaporating off.
Or does the use of it as a catalyst change that?




 

[Hunter2]

If you had to heat it up, Methanol or IPA no good alternatives. Poisson gas and explosive mixture. Better probably would be to use Glycole or Glycerine.

[Enthalpy]

At least in ton amount, propylene carbonate is very cheap
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/price-propylene-carbonate.html
1000$/t, that's only 5× the price of crude oil. But I've seen none on Amazon.com nor eBay.com.