The circular on technology, machinery and equipment used in the steel industry is seen as an engine for steel businesses to invest in modern technology in order to improve competitiveness, said the Vietnam Economic News on April 8.

According to Circular 03/2014/TT-BCT issued by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, machinery and equipment used in the industry must meet provisions of the law on energy saving.

Before an introduction of the new circular, many steel businesses actively applied modern technology in production, contributing to reducing costs and improving competitiveness such as installing energy-saving devices mounted with inverter and taking advantage of exhaust fumes from smelting furnaces to dry raw materials. These are large businesses having high competitiveness in the steel industry.

Trinh Van Hoan from the Vietnam Steel Corporation’s Technical Safety Department said that the Thu Duc Steel Joint Stock Company conducted research and successfully applied the system to load hot billets in order to roll steel, contributing to saving fuels for the company.

In the previous period, it was necessary to wait for cooling time and then put into rolling, causing oil and gas losses. The new solution has contributed to saving 30 percent of power consumption.

In terms of the Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel Joint Stock Corporation, the main materials for pig-iron production remain coal and power. Therefore, the plant has used 207kW electric current instead of 210kW electric current in order to save power and limit power wastage in a case of power cut.

In addition, restarting smelting furnaces will take a lot of energy. Therefore, the plant has minimized outage and idling time by rearranging production hours.

Moreover, old incandescent bulbs were replaced by power-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. These solutions have helped the plant significantly reduce power consumption.

In terms of the Vietnam Steel Corporation, to save power, the corporation has actively invested in modern machinery and equipment, applied advanced technical measures and rearranged the organisational structure in order to reduce power consumption and improve efficiency in steel production. These solutions have helped the corporation shorten molten time and increase the life of furnaces as well as reduce power consumption.

In addition, the corporation has organised production based on two shifts of 20 hours per day in off-peak and normal hours to take advantage of low price power. The corporation has spent peak hours to maintain machinery and equipment and prepare raw materials for production. The corporation also removed all electric furnaces with a capacity of less than 10 tonnes and purchased electric furnaces with larger capacity. In particular, reorganizing production hours was implemented. These solutions have helped the corporation reduce about 20 percent of power consumption.

Trinh Van Hoan said that in the near future, Vietnam Steel Corporation leaders will direct member units to apply advanced technical measures in order to continue reducing power consumption from five to seven percent.-VNA