With the support from Phu Tho Department of Industry and Trade’s Center of Industrial Promotion and Energy Efficiency, Song Hong Aluminum Joint Stock Compnay (directly under Song Hong Corporation – The Ministry of Construction) has been implementing energy saving solutions with initial success.

According to Mr. Nguyen Phu Ha, Deputy Director of Technical, with more than 10 years of operation, Song Hong Aluminum JSC (Shalumi) now has a staff of 292 and employees, with three factories and two subsidiaries. The company produces annually over five thousand tons of products with industrial production value reaching well over VND310 billion, revenue VND361 billion and VND18 billion paid to the state budget. Average growth since 2004 has always reaches 15 to 20%. Despite the stable growth, annual energy cost is enormous. Therefore, solving the energy cost reduction puzzle is the target that the company always heads  for.

After reviewing and evaluating production activities in Shalumi, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Mong Tuan, an energy audit expert asserted that "the company has paid much attention to energy saving and applied many technical innovations to improve productivity and reduce energy consumption, however, without the overall evaluation and thorough monitoring programs, the results have been local and only in some specific equipment”. Energy audit results have shown that the energy saving potential remains enormous. With nine proposed solutions, it is estimated that the company could save over VND1.6 billion per year with the payback period of 1.8 years.

Specifically, with the lighting system, the company has monitored the life of each bulb, then will gradually replace low efficiency bulbs with higher efficiency ones. The sets of 400-500W high pressure lamps will be replaced with 150-250W HPS lamps, T10 lamps with T5-T8 fluorescent bulbs, 65W incandescent bulbs with 15W compact bulbs. With the investment costs of over VND70 million, the company can save about 52,000 kwh annually.

The installation of Powboss for high pressure oil pumping engines of weighting machines has the potential to save nearly 390,000 Kwh, equivalent to over VND357 million per year. The initial investment is estimated at VND560 million and can be retrieved after 1.5 years.

Especially, the replacement of electric furnaces with gas furnaces has the advantage of heating the furnaces and the quick quenching process does not cause heat loss. Moreover, gas furnaces have lower gas consumption norm than electric furnaces and they are equipped with automatic and energy saving section cutting machines. The economic benefit of this measure is about VND760 million per year.

Besides, with the consultation of  Phu Tho Center of Industrial Promotion and Energy Efficiency, the company has also considered applying some other measures such as installing solar water heaters, installing ventilation sphere system or replacing one-chamber mold annealing furnaces with two-chamber furnaces.

The company has also installed a clock system to control energy and power meters to measure power consumption of each zone to propose reasonable solutions, said Mr. Ha.

By Minh Duc