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In recent years, the demand for products made of biodegradable or partially biodegradable materials has been increasing. This is mainly due to the ever-increasing amount of waste in landfills, but also to the problem of post-production waste management. This problem also concerns waste from the casting process of sands made on the basis of furfuryl resin, as well as residues from the regeneration process of these sands. The article presents the issues related to the methodology of research on the biodegradation process both in the natural environment and methods conducted in laboratory conditions. The preliminary results of the research on the biodegradation process in the aquatic environment, to which the dusts from mechanical regeneration of moulding sand were subjected, indicate the directions of further research and work in the field of selection of components of moulding sand with biodegradable properties. These tests should be carried out primarily in terms of determining the minimum and maximum amount of the addition of a biodegradable component to the moulding sand.

Resin-based binders are one of the main materials used in foundry molding and core sands. This work adds to the research on self-curing sands with furfuryl resin, which dominates in the production of large-size castings. The work concerns the possibility of using biodegradable polymers as a component of resin-based binders. Biodegradable or partially biodegradable polymers are a group of materials which have an increasing level of importance in many areas of life and technology. This is mainly due to the increase in waste deposited in landfills, water and soil. This problem also concerns waste from the casting production process with the use of disposable molds with resin-based binders, which are mainly residues from their mechanical regeneration process. The aim of the research presented in this paper was to determine the effect of polycaprolactone (PCL) on the structure of post-regeneration dust from molding sands before and after the biodegradation process carried out in a water environment. Structure studies were carried out by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and the changes in the mass by TG/DTA-QMS analysis. The article also presents the results of the research of the morphology carried out by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the chemical oxygen demand index (COD) in water extracts of dust samples.