Towards Cleaner Technologies

Transcription

1 Towards Cleaner Technologies A process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster S CoSMiLE m a l Com l & p M e ic te ro n c N e Learn e t w ing o E r k nt er se i pr s

2 Towards Cleaner Technologies A process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster

3 GLASS PROJECT TEAM Project facilitation/management Amitabh Behar (2003/04) Somnath Bhattacharjee (till 2003) Jean-Bernard Dubois Urs Heierli (till 1999) Pierre Jaboyedoff Veena Joshi Siglinde Kalin (till 1996) Girish Sethi Project implementation Somnath Bhattacharjee (till 2003) Mohit Dua ( ) Ananda Mohan Ghosh (from 2002) B N Ghosh (from 2005) W Andrew Hartley (till 2000) Pierre Jaboyedoff Puneet Katyal ( ) Sachin Kumar (from 2004) Jayanta Mitra ( ) Girish Sethi B C Sharma N Vasudevan SDC SDC SDC Sorane SA SDC SDC Consultant, British glass Sorane SA Consultant, Demonstration pot furnace unit Express Glass Works Demonstration muffle furnace unit Saraswati Glass Works Collaborating industry associations Firozabad Glass Chamber of Commerce and Industry Glass Industries Syndicate, Firozabad Collaborating NGO for techno-social programme at Firozabad Vikas Sansthan, Shikohabad The glass team acknowledges the invaluable contributions made by a number of workers (firemen, masons, operators, and others) and entrepreneurs of the Firozabad glass industry cluster.

4 Towards Cleaner Technologies A process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster Editors Girish Sethi Ananda Mohan Ghosh Narrator R P Subramanian Series Editors Girish Sethi Pierre Jaboyedoff Veena Joshi

5 The Energy and Resources Institute and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, 2008 ISBN This document may be reproduced in whole or in part and in any form for educational and non-profit purposes without special permission, provided acknowledgement of the source is made. SDC and would appreciate receiving a copy of any publication that uses this document as a source. Suggested format for citation Sethi G and Ghosh A M (eds) Towards Cleaner Technologies: a process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster New Delhi: The Energy and Resources Institute. 238 pp. Published by Press The Energy and Resources Institute Tel or Darbari Seth Block Fax or IHC Complex, Lodhi Road India +91 Delhi (0) 11 New Delhi teripress@teri.res.in India Web Printed in India at I G Printers Pvt Ltd, New Delhi

6 CONTENTS Foreword Preface ix xiii INTRODUCTION 1 Small and micro enterprises in India 1 The protected years 2 Liberalization challenges 4 The environmental imperative 4 A partnership is forged 5 SDC human and institutional development 5 Global environment programme 6 global vision, local focus 6 The macro-level study 7 The scope for intervention 8 Screening workshop, December Getting started 10 Cluster-level intervention 10 Finding the right technology 12 Participatory technology 12 Capacity building key to sustainability 13 Structuring the interventions 13 Action research 15 Competence pooling 15

7 CHARTING THE COURSE 17 Overview 17 How glass is made 18 Glass melting furnaces 22 Tank furnaces 22 Pot furnaces 22 Bangle making/auxiliary furnaces 24 Muffle furnaces or pakai bhattis 30 Cluster dynamics: high competition, low technology 32 Energy audits 35 Discussions, recommendations, and decisions 39 General recommendations 41 Specific recommendations 41 Tank furnaces 41 Pot furnaces 41 Muffle furnaces or pakai bhattis 42 Taking a stand on child labour 42 First contact 42 Diagnostic study 45 Drawing up plans 46 Pot furnace 46 Muffle furnace 47 Supreme Court verdict and its impact 48 No-gas zone units: tough choices 51 Change in project strategy 52 Pot furnace 52 Muffle furnace 52 Local institutions 53 Identifying partners and collaborators 53 Local consultant 55 Choosing a demonstration site 56 INTO THE FIELD 61 Gas-fired pot furnace 61 From concept to design 63 CDGI model 66 Retrofitted models: a quick-fix solution 66 Project approach: only the best will do! 67 Fabrication/furnace construction 67 vi Contents

8 Furnace: the basics 67 Recuperator and gas line 70 The crown 76 Test firing with light diesel oil 81 Demonstration: gas-firing 85 Many-hued challenges 87 Troubleshooting and fine-tuning 90 Gas-fired muffle furnace 96 Participatory design competition 96 Preliminary trial versions 99 Demonstration: identifying the best option 102 Trials and results 103 Spreading the word 107 Spreading the technology 110 Pot furnace 110 Replications: the long wait 112 R-LNG... and its fallout 115 Replications begin 116 From trickle to flood: replications gather momentum 128 Present status of replications 135 Technology improvements 138 Capacity building 153 Muffle furnace 157 Replications: a different trajectory 157 Case for cooperatives and barriers 161 GAIL tightens the taps 162 Towards social action 165 Environmental monitoring 166 Baseline study of bangle makers 171 Social action plan 172 Makhanpur shedding an idea 172 Daukeli a good start 174 Other initiatives: many challenges to overcome 179 THE WAY FORWARD 181 Lessons and challenges 181 Cluster-level factors 182 Importance of an ice-breaker/facilitator 182 Demonstration site: owner s commitment is the key 182 Technology: benchmark vs functional 183 Contents vii

9 The multiplier effect: incremental approach vs leapfrogging? 185 Financial assistance: assumptions and reality 186 Understanding cluster dynamics 187 Policy-level factors 193 Fuel supply and pricing policies 193 The human dimension, and the question of energy security 194 in Firozabad Addressing needs: a stakeholder analysis 199 Glass melting units 200 Pakai bhattis 201 Household-level processing units 201 The road ahead: knowledge-sharing frame 202 ANNEXURES 1 All about glass 205 How glass is made 205 Kinds of glass Evolving a gas flow/melting schedule for the 209 demonstration furnace Measuring furnace temperature 209 Preheating schedule 210 Gas flow/melting schedule Gas-fired muffle furnace: preliminary trials 214 Gas-fired tunnel-type model 214 Gas-fired model based on pakai bhatti design Gas-fired pot furnace: replication units 218 Units that have adopted the -designed recuperative furnace 218 Spin-off replications units that have installed their own 220 variants of the -designed recuperator BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 CONTRIBUTORS 227 ABBREVIATIONS 233 GLOSSARY 237 viii Contents

10 FOREWORD The history of glass-making in India goes back thousands of years when beads, bangles and other small glass items were made in kingdoms in North and South India and traded with other ancient civilizations such as Persia, Greece, and Rome. Indeed, the origin of glass bangles is perhaps as old as the Indus Valley Civilization; the famous bronze figurine of a dancing girl unearthed by archaeologists at Mohenjo-Daro (c BCE) has her left arm and wrist completely encased in bangles. Interestingly, the very word bangle is derived from the Hindi word bangri, meaning glass bracelet! Over the ages, the bangle has come to be closely associated with the institution of marriage or suhag throughout India. Today, the nation buys an estimated 50 million bangles each day, and all these bangles are made by units in the small-scale glass industry cluster at Firozabad (or suhag nagri as it is popularly called), located about 40 km from Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal. Traditionally, Firozabad units use open pot furnaces to produce glass for processing into bangles. Besides the open pot furnace units, Firozabad also has hundreds of muffle furnaces or pakai bhattis to anneal the finished bangles. Till the mid-1990s these furnaces operated on coal and/or wood. undertook energy audit studies at that time, which revealed that the energy consumed by the furnaces was very high and that there was ample scope to reduce their existing levels of energy consumption. The Firozabad glass-making industry came into the limelight in December 1996, when the Supreme Court of India ordered 292 coal-based factories in the area known as the Taj Trapezium Zone, including the Firozabad pot furnace units, to switch from coal to cleaner alternative fuels such as natural gas, or else to relocate or shut down. Although the Court directed the government to supply natural gas as an alternative fuel to the affected industries, the pot

11 Towards Cleaner Technologies : A Process Story In The Firozabad Glass Industry Cluster Publisher : Press ISBN : Author : Girish Sethi, Ananda Mohan Ghosh Type the URL : Get this ebook