Hai Dang Ltd., was established in 2004 and formally came into operation since August 2005. With a small-scaled production line, the company is now having 15 employees with an annuallly average production of 500 to 800 ton fish meal. Main raw material sources for the company are from Danang and Quangnam, etc. Fish meal is mostly consumed at the North and the South market.
In 2008, the Company has received the support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade via the Cleaner Production in Industry Component (CPI); and the technical assistance from Vietnam Cleaner Production Centre in assessing and applying CP solutions.
Before applying CP, Hai Dang has met many environmental problems derived from production process such as air pollution due to fish dust, odor and steam from steam system; water contamination due to floor cleaning, fresh fish off-loading and gathering before processing and quenching process at the boiler. Those environmental problems have directly and negatively affected the working conditions of the employees as well as the environment of the surrounding community.
In the first phase (from December 2008 to June 2009), The Company set up a Cleaner Production Team to assess the whole company. The team had 03 members who are production supervisor of the company and led by Ms. Tran Thi Troi.
The Team has conducted a walk-through assessment on the production line at place. After the assessment and identification of all waste streams, the Team has conducted mass and energy balances for the whole production line. All collected data have been used to analyse and identify Cleaner Production options for each production steps.
Before applying CP, a large amount of fish dust was lost at the milling phase (around 12 tons/year). This is due to the Company had no air suction and wasted fish dust collection system. That is why the air environment at the operation line and surrounding areas were heavily polluted.
The CP team carried out Good housekeeping to reduce the material loss, including: skill training, awareness raising for workers, cover the fish meal storage to avoid powder lift-off during high wind conditions and worker’s movement..
Before applying CP, a large amount of coal was lost due to much steam leaking, poor isulation, and some no-isulation points, vertical and obsolete boiler, old steam consumers (fish steamers). All of those issues affected the production process and led to high thermal consumption.
After the CP team analyzed causes and proposed CP solutions, the Company has implemented the solutions of immediately fixing steam leaking points, isulation of steam pipelines and thermal equipment; boiler cleaning and coal classification before charging into the oven.
In the second phase (from Jan to Nov 2009), the Company has implemented some high-cost solution such as replacing the steamer by a higher efficient one and substitution of the existed boiler by the new horizionnal 3-pass one; building a the dust and odor treatment system by a water-saving absorptive scrubber; construction of a wastewater treatment system and substitution of the current cyclone and old bag filters by a new filter system to avoid dust emissions and product loss.
Particular benefits derived from Cleaner Production are as follows:
Technical benefit | Economic benefit (millions VND) | Environmental benefit |
Stage 1 | 212 | Annual reduction of 160 ton CO2 released to the environment Annual reduction of 100% dust, odor and wastewater |
Reduced defect products | 84 | |
Reduced coal consumption | 47 | |
Reduced electricity consumption | 3.5 | |
Stage 2 | 504 | |
6.46% annual reduction of electricity consumption | 7.5 | |
5.76% annual reduction of water consumption | 23 | |
2% annual reduction of product released to the environment | 60 | |
30% annual reduction of coal consumption | 444 |
Typical Cleaner Production options of the Company are as follows:
No. | CP Option | Investment | Performance | CP technique |
1 | Guide operators of the boilers to properly run the boiler in different modes, such as winding, etc. | No cost | Reduced fish meal loss; annual saving of VND 60 millions | GH |
2 | Select coal with consistent size right from the upstream process to have consistent feedstock for the boiler or the coal should be crushed to smaller size | No cost | GH | |
4 | Substitute the existing boiler by the new one with the same capacity and lower coal consumption | VND 510 millions | Annual saving of VND 296 millions by saving of 60.4 ton coal/year Annual reduction of 112 ton CO2 | EM |
5 | Replace the current steamer by a higher efficient one. | VND 885 millions | Annual saving of VND148 millions by saving of 10% coal consumption per year Reduction of GHG emissions | EM |
6 | Replace the current milling machines by new and higher efficient ones. | VND 140 millions | Annual saving of VND 60 millions due to recovery of 2% fish meal released to the environment | EM |
7 | Improve or replace the current dust and odor treatment system by a water-saving absorptive scrubber | VND 721.5 millions | Completely treat the air pollution situation at place | EM |
8 | Construction of a wastewater treatment system with a capacity of 50m3/day | VND 1.45 billions | EOP |
Remarks: GH: Good housekeeping, EM: Equipment Modification; EOP: End-of-pipe
Perceiving the benefits from CP application, the company insisted to maintain the CP team activities and integrate CP in the general management system at place. In order to facilitate CP application, a simple environmental management system has been developed. The Company has also set up environmental policy, whereby it is requested that the environmental protection law and other regulations should be followed strictly, ensuring the sustainable development of the company and reducing waste emission sources. The Company has integrated process management system with the environmental management system, therefore, energy and material consumption is monitored at the same time with the monitoring of pollutant parameters in the waste streams.
The environmental monitoring plan has been initiated. The aim of the plan is to monitor significant improvements from applying CP or to adjust if there is any reduction in environmental benefits. The environmental monitoring system covers both air and wastewater.
CP not only brings about benefits from energy saving, emission minimization, reduced water consumption, but also helps the Company increase production, improve product quality, prove prestige. The implemented CP options at the Company are typical case studies for enterprises in the sector of foodstuff production in Vietnam./.