India is the second-largest producer of casting and the second-largest consumer of sand in the world. foundries generate waste foundry sand (wfs), which contains toxic heavy metals and particulate matter, which makes its dumping an environmental and health hazard. in india, more than 80 % of the foundries are medium and small-scale. these foundries cannot afford costs, associated with dumping and treatment of waste foundry sand. stringent regulations of pollution control board and the ministry of mines regarding waste disposal and sand mining has brought many of these small-scale foundries on the verge of closure. a lot of research has been done to use wfs in other industries like construction and ceramics, but not much has been done to reclaim and use waste sand within the foundry itself. so, there is an urgent need for the development of a reclamation technology that is economical. this would not only suffice the need of the foundries, but also address the environmental issues. the problem with the wfs is dead clay that deposits on the sand grain surface, making the sand unsuitable for reuse. we have developed a process to reduce the total clay content from 12 % to as low as 2.2 % in waste foundry sand. mechanical methods without any heat treatment can be used to reclaim green sand as opposed to current reclamation methods which involve burning the sand to around 800 °c. in this direction, three prototypes were developed during the course of this work; vertical fluidized bed, horizontal fluidized bed, and two-stage mechanical attrition device. the cost of reclaimed sand is higher in case of fluidized bed based prototypes as opposed to a two-stage attrition device, where it is less than half of the cost of the fresh sand. the experimental data generated on the two-stage attrition device under different conditions and the optimum set of design and operating parameters to get the best performance. different strategies were studied for the reclamation of foundry sand. • the vertical fluidized bed prototype, which is based on the principle of particle-particle attrition, reduced clay content to 4.2 % from 12 %. • the horizontal fluidized bed brought down the clay content to as low as 2.2 % with the higher operating costs. • two-stage attrition device that uses particle-particle and particle ball attrition, combined with sieving, showed promising results, and total clay content of up to 2.2 % was achieved in a cost-effective manner. thus, it may be concluded that simple mechanical means of reclamation without heat treatment (∼800 °c) is promising and has the potential to improve the economics of sand reclamation process, making reclamation economically viable for small and medium scale foundries. the two-stage attrition device, which can reclaim up to 125 kg/hour of green sand, has been installed in govt. polytechnic, kolhapur where it was tested for suitability & quality of the reclaimed sand. as far as field trial results are concerned, they were found to be satisfactory. some foundries have started to use our reclaimed sand in kolhapur foundry cluster. we conducted a survey of 100 foundries (small scale) in kolhapur and surprisingly found that they are dumping wfs 600 tpm, which is a huge amount. similarly, other foundries are also dumping wfs. according to the institute of indian foundrymen (iif, 2016), indian foundries dump waste sand to the tune of 10 million tpa. disposal of wfs becomes one of the major challenges for foundry industries nowadays. it is also a big challenge for environmental concerns. the exiting unit (two-stage mechanical attrition device) can reclaim the wfs at an economical rate and make the foundry process efficient. the use of reclaimed sand within the foundries will reduce environmental concerns like health, occupational hazards, air and water pollution etc.