Many
small and medium industries in the district are trying to go green. They have begun opting for measures that will help them reduce energy consumption and thus reduce their carbon footprints. Whether it is redesigning furnaces, changing compressors or just adding a small equipment to their factory, most industries have adopted various measures to save at least a couple of hundred units a day. The few units which have adopted such measures say they have seen a difference immediately.
Bright Industries, an iron casting manufacturer in Ganesapuram, used to consume around 8,200 units a day or 2.45 lakh units a month. The company became one of the first small industries to opt for an energy audit of their unit. “They brought all their energy efficiency measuring instruments to my unit, studied our usage and gave us a few recommendations, by which we could reduce our electricity usage,” said joint managing director S Balraj. “As a first step, as per their recommendation, we bought and fitted a variable frequency drive (VFD) to our compressor, which is one of the four main electricity consumers in a foundry,” he said. “The VFD ensures that the compressor motor switches off when it is filled with air and is not in use. Earlier, even when we unload and the compressor just has air, the motor would continue running,” he added. We immediately noticed a reduction in our daily electricity consumption by 300 units.
Another foundry based in Goldwin Signal, Sri Ramakrishna Industries, which manufactures submersible pumps, motors, gear boxes and textile machinery spares, had been running a semi-automated line since 2012. “We always had an issue of our Cupola furnace functioning 0.5% less efficient than industry standards, and thus consumed more electricity. We also burn pig iron and use refractive ceramic bricks, both non-renewable resources. Wanting to become eco-friendly we were looking for ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption,” said its vice president, operations, Gunasekar Duraisamy. “We changed the design of our Cupola which did not have a uniform flow of heat in a way that it began having a laminar flow of heat. So instead of us introducing it in one corner and making it travel, we split the chamber so the heat spread in a uniform manner,” he said. “We immediately began consuming half the amount of bricks we consumed in a month and 44 kg of coke or pig iron in a day,” he said.
City’s renowned pump manufacturer Mahendra Pumps, with their initiatives including fitting LED lights in their foundry, saves more than Rs 2 lakh a month. “We improved the refractory lining of our furnace and added a chemical called Redux EF40L de-slagger. This cost us Rs 50,000, but we saved 23,300 kwh and Rs 1.98 lakh per month. Besides this, we added a variable frequency drive to our compressor, energy efficiency lighting in our foundry and a timer and sensor control for plant operations,” said a company official. “We have seen a sizeable drop in our energy consumption,” he said.
At least 50 small and medium scale foundries in the district have registered with COINDIA’s energy management cell to get an energy audit done of their foundries in the last one year. While 20 companies have been audited and have begun implementing some of the recommendations, the remaining 30 are in the process of being audited. “Since I am a one-member team, it takes time to do a complete audit, give a report and then follow up on the success of the implements,” says energy manager Sivakumar. “More companies are coming forward,” he adds.
Industrialists say it is a win-win situation because reducing electricity consumptions directly reflects as an increase in profits in their balance sheet. “We spend around Rs 1.5 lakh-Rs 2.5 lakh for each of these measures, but we make back the money in hardly one to two years, after which we see a decrease in expenses and thus an increase in profit,” said Duraisamy. “With our raw materials and product prices remaining fixed, reducing our costs of conversion is the only way to increase profits,” he said. “While our saving even 1,500 units a month looks miniscule, imagine all 500-odd foundries in the district doing the same. We can save 7.5 lakh units a month together,” he added.
