Entrapped gases, solidification shrinkage and non-metallic compound formation are main sources of porosity in aluminium alloy castings. Porosity is detrimental to the mechanical properties of these castings; therefore, its reduction is pursued. Rotary degassing is the method mostly employed in industry to remove dissolved gases from aluminium melts, reducing porosity formation during solidification of the cast part. Recently, ultrasonic degassing has emerged as a promising alternative thanks to a lower dross formation and higher energy efficiency. This work aims to evaluate the efficiency of the ultrasonic degasser and compare it to a conventional rotary degassing technique applied to an AlSi10Mg alloy. Degassing efficiency was evaluated employing the reduced pressure test (RPT), where samples solidified under reduced pressure conditions are analysed. Factors affecting RPT were considered and temperature parameters for the test were established. The influence of ultrasonic degassing process parameters, such as degassing treatment duration and purging gas flow rate were studied, as well as treated aluminium volume and oxide content. Finally, ultrasonic degassing process was contrasted to a conventional rotary degassing technique, comparing their efficiency.

Recyclability is one of the great features of aluminium and its alloys. However, it has been typically considered that the secondary aluminium quality is low and bad. This is only because aluminium is so sensitive to turbulence. Uncontrolled transfer and handling of the liquid aluminium results in formation of double oxide defects known as bifilms. Bifilms are detrimental defects. They form porosity and deteriorate the properties. The detection and quantification of bifilms in liquid aluminium can be carried out by bifilm index measured in millimetres as an indication of melt cleanliness using Reduced Pressure Test (RPT). In this work, recycling efficiency and quality change of A356 alloy with various Ti additions have been investigated. The charge was recycled three times and change in bifilm index and bifilm number was evaluated. It was found that when high amount of Ti grain refiner was added, the melt quality was increased due to sedimentation of bifilms with Ti. When low amount of Ti is added, the melt quality was degraded.

The paper presents a modified in-house model for calculating heat transfer coefficients during flow condensation, which can be applied to a variety of working fluids, but natural refrigerants in particular, at full range thermodynamic parameters with a particular focus on increased saturation pressure. The modified model is based on a strong physical basis, namely the hypothesis of analogy between the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop in two-phase flow. The model verification is based on a consolidated database that consists of 1286 data points for 7 natural refrigerants and covers the reduced pressure range (the ratio of critical pressure and saturation pressure) from 0.1 to 0.8 for different mass velocities and diameters. The new version of the in-house model, developed earlier by Mikielewicz, was compared with 4 other mathe-matical models widely recommended for engineering calculations and obtained the best consistency results. The value of the mean absolute percentage error was 28.13% for the modified model, the best result among the scrutinised methods.