A survey by Hanoi Energy Conservation Center (Hanoi ECC) conducted at Kim Lan Pottery Village – an antique pottery village in Hanoi with about 200 craftsmen’s households shows that most households currently use traditional kilns. This old type of kilns has been inefficient, energy consuming, and failed the regeneration of heat from the fuel gas.

To create a complete ceramic product to consumers, it is to go through several processing stages, such as clay milling, green ware mixing, hard shaping & decoration, bone-drying, bisque glazing and firing, of which, firing accounts for 90% of total energy for production process.

In Kim Lan pottery village, the households mainly use three types of energy, including electricity, coal and wood. Coal makes up 97% of energy consumption, for processes such as bone-drying and glaze firing.

Long-held practices of small production, handicraft, as well as lack of knowledge about energy savings have led to constraints for ceramic production in Kim Lan village. Every year, it is estimated that this village consumes dozen thousands tons of coal, causing emissions of toxic gases and slag, polluting the environment. It is even worse when the product quality is often uneven,while the rate of perfect product is only 65-80%, pushing up the production costs.

Therefore, to increase the product quality and to reduce the production costs by reducing energy costs has been rightly chosen by many  households in Kim Lan. Transformation from conventional kiln into gas-fueled kiln is a new technology in pottery making. Thus, these households have built new bone-dry chamber, to recover the waste heat from the kiln.

The results from survey in households having transformed into new technology shows that this type of kiln brings about outstanding advantages. The product quality is more standardized; the perfect products proportion reaches 90%. At the same time, a  reduction of 85% in the amount of discharged slag is achieved.

Energy audit conducted by Hanoi ECC at the facilities participating in the pilot transformation into gas-fueled kiln program (those big units which consume over 150 tons / year) shows that the enterprises could save as much as VND100-180 million/year. Accordingly, the investment payback ranges within 3-4 years.

It is easy to find that the transformation into new technologies in production not only brings about economic efficiency, but also minimizes the negative impacts on the environment. Scaling up the model of transformation into the gas-fueled kiln can be the right direction, helping Kim Lan ceramic village increase its competitiveness and find a firm foothold in the market.

By Trong Tan