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What does sustainability look like inside a tyre plant? In an interview with Clean India Journal, Kuldeep Singh, Plant Head & Vice President – Manufacturing, Continental Tires India, spoke about the company’s move away from coal, its transition to biomass-based steam generation, investments in renewable energy and the challenges of re-engineering legacy industrial systems for a more sustainable future
The Organisation has officially phased out coal and heavy fuel oil globally. How are you managing this shift at your local facilities?
A. Coal is an integral part of any process industry because, for curing, we use it to generate steam. It is obviously not an environment-friendly product. We actually worked on options like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and piped natural gas (PNG) and eventually, as a balance between sustainability and cost-effectiveness, we shifted to biomass. Since the last three years, we have been producing steam using biomass, which is carbon neutral. In all our plants worldwide, including India, we are not using coal at all. There are plans to use electricity, but that is still at a nascent stage.
How did the idea and vision behind this move take shape?
A. Continental, being a global company, has its responsibility towards sustainability. There is always a worldwide discussion at environment, health and safety levels that we have to reduce our carbon footprint. Our supervisory board continues to set targets to reduce carbon footprints by more than 20% compared to 2020 levels. Every plant is expected to first come out with new ideas and share them with manufacturing units worldwide so that best practices can be implemented everywhere.
What were the major challenges or hiccups you faced while going through this transition?
A. There were too many. If today I decide to go on a gas-fired boiler, then the first challenge is the availability of gas. Pipeline gas for industry is still very difficult. The other option is gas bullets or tanks which can be installed, but as soon as they get empty, getting them refilled or replaced becomes difficult from a logistics point of view.
Even the industrial boilers, which are worth millions of rupees, were actually designed to use coal because no one thought there would be a time when we would stop using coal. So, there were many design upgrades and changes that needed to be done to make the boilers use alternate fuels like biomass.
Then there was the availability of biomass itself because all of us were shifting towards it as part of our responsibility towards the environment. The calorific value of biomass is less than 60% that of coal, which means the quantum of fuel we need to handle in factories becomes huge.
We are exploring technology to eliminate the use of steam in the curing process entirely. This move could potentially transition the plant from water-efficient to water-neutral in the coming years.”— Kuldeep Singh
How has this changed your facility’s internal cleaning and maintenance requirements?
A. For storage, we actually had to build more storage facilities. During summer, we cannot have dust flying around all over and polluting the environment. During monsoon, if the fuel gets wet, it becomes even more difficult to use it for combustion and steam generation.
We hired burner experts who carried out all those modifications. Even the filtration system and the conveying system had to be changed. So, it required end-to-end supply-chain planning from stage one till the last stage where steam is generated.
How different are the advanced filtration and membrane technologies from the standard ones?
A. Our plant is certified as Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD). This is part of our responsibility in two ways — one from an environmental point of view and second from a sustainability point of view to reduce water consumption.
We continue to filter and separate waste particles and sediments generated during the process. That clean water is then sent back to the boilers, for the process, for cleaning and gardening. That is how our plant got recognised for the best reduction in water consumption.
What are the daily challenges of maintaining a near-closed loop water system in a high-temperature tyre plant?
A. From the first stage of mixing or compounding till the last stage of warehousing tyres, we use water in our machines for circulating water to maintain temperature-controlled jackets. Water is also used in the curing process to cure our tyres.
This water gets recirculated. It gets collected, filtered and monitored through various flow meters. These flow meters give us environmental metrics such as how much water is consumed per ton of compound made, and how much water is consumed in our canteens and for employees who need to bathe before exiting the plant.
All this monitoring takes place and there is a review mechanism every month by the sustainability board to assess water consumption patterns. If any state-of-the-art technology or process is proposed anywhere in the world, or if the sustainability team develops a new tool, it is immediately adopted.
Do you see renewable energy adoption as a realistic near-term goal, or are there structural barriers?
A. From a finance and cost point of view, we are always keen on the payback period of investments. But for such investments, we have to view them from more angles. From our point of view, if there is anything related to safety, health or sustainable energy, we do not evaluate such investments solely through the lens of Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
It may not be very attractive from a finance point of view initially, but once it crosses that hurdle, it continues to pay for at least 25 years.
Your organisation has explored using rice husk ash silica and recycled PET bottles. How many of these green raw materials are currently integrated into the Indian production line?
A. The use of PET bottles and rice husk ash silica is related to silica-based tyres, which are important for better tyre properties. We are using silica as of now, but technology transfer for some of these advanced materials is still evolving in India. At present, we are not manufacturing those variants of tyres in India. The moment economies of scale support plant installation and commissioning for such products, I am sure we will do it.
Is there any waste generated in the plant, or is everything recycled?
A. Not everything gets recycled. There is domestic waste, bio waste and waste like hydraulic oils which cannot always be recycled. However, we have also started filtering some oils and reusing them over the last 12 to 18 months. But for waste that cannot be recycled internally, there are authorised agents approved by the Pollution Control Board to whom we hand over
such waste.
What are your plans in the future?
A. Our drive to reduce water consumption will continue. Even after achieving drastic reductions, we are now working on something where the entire curing process, which is very energy-intensive, may not require steam at all. If we can develop such systems, then the whole water consumption associated with generating steam for curing tyres can be eliminated. A few years from now, we may even be discussing becoming water neutral.
