Environmentally friendly initiatives
After 1 year of applying the initiative "Converting fuel to be carbon neutral", Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh is considered a special innovation, a turning point in creating a product from sustainable green energy sources of Bridgestone Vietnam Tire Manufacturing Company Limited.
Sharing about the initiative, Mr. Thanh said: At the company, to create the shape of the finished car tire, it is necessary to vulcanize rubber in a mold. The vulcanization reaction conditions include 3 factors: temperature, pressure and time. Currently, the heat source provided to the mold is high-temperature saturated steam, converted from fossil fuels (liquefied petroleum gas LPG) through a boiler system using LPG gas.
In the stages and phases of the factory's production activities, the source of emissions that have a negative impact on the environment comes from LPG used to create saturated steam and from electricity for production. However, electricity and LPG fuel are the lifeblood of production activities and cannot be eliminated. Therefore, the important task of the factory is to minimize or neutralize CO2 emissions.
“From this reality, my colleagues and I pondered and analyzed to find energy-saving solutions, either replacing them or switching to a new energy source. After a period of research, I came up with the idea of choosing Biomass as a fuel source to produce saturated steam,” said Mr. Thanh.
From the initial idea, Mr. Thanh started to implement the solution, installing a new boiler system using Biomass fuel, designed with modern technology, long life, energy saving and efficiency over 85%.
With the design of 2 inclined grate furnaces with a capacity of 10 tons of steam/hour/furnace, ensuring stable quality for the required load and enough compensation for each other to meet production activities even in case of a furnace failure. The new Biomass boiler system has met 2 goals: saving production costs and neutralizing carbon emissions.
Contribute 5-7 initiatives/year
The solution has been applied at the second auxiliary workshop since December 2023. The Biomass boiler system has replaced the old system that emitted a lot of CO2, has superior features compared to the company's existing solutions, is designed to suit the productivity of the current factory and can be upgraded when increasing production output and expanding production. This new system helps the production environment develop sustainably, ensuring the company's social responsibility commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030.
In addition to the environmental significance, by applying 4.0 technology to the new system, modern sensors, synchronous energy-saving equipment, PLC programming for control helps reduce labor, increase accuracy and high reliability in the production process, affirming the intelligence of Vietnamese workers. The solution helps save 12,673,000,000 VND/year in the first year of application.
During his 12 years working at Bridgestone Tire Manufacturing Vietnam Co., Ltd., Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh has contributed dozens of initiatives (an average of 5-6 initiatives per year) to the company. “Converting fuel to become carbon neutral” is the initiative that Mr. Thanh is most passionate about and also brings the greatest value. This initiative also helped Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh to be honored with the Creative Labor Certificate from the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor.
After this initiative, Mr. Thanh is currently nurturing many ideas and initiatives to contribute to reducing costs, increasing productivity, improving fuel to protect the environment, in line with the company's orientation in the coming years.
