Towards Cleaner Technologies a Process Story in the Firozabad Glass Industry Cluster GLASS PROJECT TEAM
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Towards Cleaner Technologies A process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster etence Ne mp twor Co k S es ma ris ll & terp CoMicrSo LeMarning Ein LE Towards Cleaner Technologies A process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster GLASS PROJECT TEAM Project facilitation/management Amitabh Behar (2003/04) SDC Somnath Bhattacharjee (till 2003) TERI Jean-Bernard Dubois SDC Urs Heierli (till 1999) SDC Pierre Jaboyedoff Sorane SA Veena Joshi SDC Siglinde Kalin (till 1996) SDC Girish Sethi TERI Project implementation Somnath Bhattacharjee (till 2003) TERI Mohit Dua (1997–2001) TERI Ananda Mohan Ghosh (from 2002) TERI B N Ghosh (from 2005) Consultant, TERI W Andrew Hartley (till 2000) British glass Pierre Jaboyedoff Sorane SA Puneet Katyal (2001–2005) TERI Sachin Kumar (from 2004) TERI Jayanta Mitra (1999–2006) TERI Girish Sethi TERI B C Sharma Consultant, TERI N Vasudevan TERI 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. 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 © The Energy and Resources Institute and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, 2008 ISBN 81-7993-133-1 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 TERI 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). 2008 Towards Cleaner Technologies: a process story in the Firozabad glass industry cluster New Delhi: The Energy and Resources Institute. 238 pp. Published by TERI Press The Energy and Resources Institute Tel. 2468 2100 or 4150 4900 Darbari Seth Block Fax 2468 2144 or 2468 2145 IHC Complex, Lodhi Road India +91 • Delhi (0) 11 New Delhi – 110 003 E-mail [email protected] India Web www.teriin.org Printed in India at I G Printers Pvt Ltd, New Delhi CONTENTS Foreword ix Preface 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 TERI—global vision, local focus 6 The macro-level study 7 The scope for intervention 8 Screening workshop, December 1994 9 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 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 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 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 206 2 Evolving a gas flow/melting schedule for the 209 demonstration furnace Measuring furnace temperature 209 Preheating schedule 210 Gas flow/melting schedule 211 3 Gas-fired muffle furnace: preliminary trials 214 Gas-fired tunnel-type model 214 Gas-fired model based on pakai bhatti design 216 4 Gas-fired pot furnace: replication units 218 Units that have adopted the TERI-designed recuperative furnace 218 ‘Spin-off’ replications—units that have installed their own 220 variants of the TERI-designed recuperator BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 CONTRIBUTORS 227 ABBREVIATIONS 233 GLOSSARY 237 viii Contents 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. 2500 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. TERI 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 furnace units – which constitute the apex of the multi-level bangle-making industry – had neither the technology nor the know-how to operate their pot furnaces on gas at that time. Hence, they faced the prospect of closure; and this threatened the future of tens of thousands of families in Firozabad who depended on the bangle-making industry for their livelihood. It was against this backdrop that TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) with the support of SDC (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), set out to develop clean, energy-efficient technologies based on natural gas for pot furnaces and pakai bhattis in Firozabad. By carrying out intensive action research in a participatory manner, and by pooling the competencies of international experts, TERI successfully designed, developed, and demonstrated two such technologies: the gas-fired recuperative pot furnace, and the gas-fired pakai bhatti. The TERI-designed pot furnace reduced energy consumption by nearly 30% compared to the other ‘retrofitted’ gas-fired pot furnaces that came up in the cluster. The gas- fired pakai bhatti design helped in reducing particulate emissions and thereby