There are now over 3,000 enterprises in Bac Ninh, which are mainly small and medium enterprises, concentrating in industries such as steel production in Chau Khe, Dinh Bang; paper production in Phu Lam, Phong Khe; and manual brick production.

Iron and steel production remains one of the strengths of Bac Ninh. Preliminary investigations have shown that there are over 800 steel enterprises in Chau Khe, Dinh Bang, including 100 steel tempering facilities, 80 steel rolling facilities, 50 steel dragging and drawing facilities, 150 recycled embryo rolling facilities and other metals production facilities. The field of steel tempering and rolling alone provides 200,000 tons of steel ingot; 200,000 tons of rolled steel to the market annually, which brings about VND200,000 billion per year.

However, to produce that amount of steel, the area of Chau Khe, Dinh Bang has to use nearly 200 pairs of medium frequency steel tempering electric furnaces, 100 continuous and reflected steel rolling furnaces, thousands of electric motors, and tens of low voltage substations. Every year, steel tempering and rolling of this area consumes nearly 200 million kWh of electricity and 30,000 tons of coal (equivalent to 60,000 TOE). The total cost\ of electricity and coal is almost VND150 billion per year.

This is an energy consuming region which has huge losses because of many different reasons such as: some technologies used here are outdated or no longer appropriate; many production stages are still manual; many devices were built and installed by people themselves based on their experiences which did not take into account energy consumption factors; the renovation and repair of equipment are not under original designs; power measuring equipment is damaged or rarely used; steel furnaces, steel rolling and dragging furnaces, boiler are not properly maintained or not focused on solutions to reduce heat and save coals, causing major heat loss.

Besides, due to the lack of capital and consulting, enterprises have many difficulties approaching energy saving solutions. For these reasons, the energy saving potential of iron and steel enterprises in Bac Ninh is very large; in some production stages it can be up to 20-50%.

Aware that the biggest target of enterprises is to reduce production costs to improve competitiveness and profits, Bac Ninh Department of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Vietnam Institute of Science and Technology, has implemented the project "Application of energy audit technique in assessing current energy consumption to reduce environment pollution in Chau Khe, Dinh Bang, Tu Son".

Moreover, since 2008, with the help of the project Promoting Energy Conservation in Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Vietnam (PECSME), enterprises have had loan guarantee and participated in workshops and counseling programs on energy saving.

Specifically, to save energy in steel manufacturing enterprises, a series of solutions which were proposed in the project have been applied in Bac Ninh, such as: improving reflected steel rolling furnaces, convert steel rolling furnaces to coal gasification furnaces; improving recycled embryo rolling furnaces; installing energy saving devices for under-load and no load motors; selecting appropriate engine capacity.

Enterprises have also been recommended to design factory systems to fully utilize sunlight in the production process, replace incandescent bulbs with energy saving compact bulbs, etc.

After applying these solutions, four steel enterprises in Bac Ninh province have saved 133,336  kWh of electricity, 112 tons of coal and 81 tons of firewood per year. Besides, these solutions have also helped reduce 115.4 tons of CO2 emissions.

 
According to leaders of Bac Ninh Department of Science and Technology, if all iron and steel production enterprises in the province apply these solutions, the energy saving potential in each business would be about 1%, equivalent to VND2 billion per year. Besides, the application of energy saving measures will also enhance the consciousness of all enterprise owners and metal workers to help them choose the technologies and organize the production to create high quality products, reduce costs, increase competitiveness in the market and contribute to ensuring national energy security.

By Minh Duc