KATHMANDU, MAR 20 - Nepal’s brick producers are preparing to adopt a win-win approach by moving towards clean technology to save energy cost and contribute to cleaner environment.
The Federation of Nepal Brick Industries (FNBI) is launching a nationwide awareness and training programme from Thursday to encourage the brick producers to apply cleaner technologies as a part of their social responsibility.
This is the first time that FNBI along with other stakeholders, including the Energy Efficiency Center under the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industries, are coming together to share and promote the application of newer and cleaner brick kiln technologies in the country.
Brick manufacturers across the country would be given 12-day training on cleaner technologies and encouraged to apply it in their system as a part of the campaign.
Growing concerns regarding the deteriorating air quality due to emissions of harmful particulates and substances due to incomplete combustion of coal from the traditional brick kilns have prompted the brick factory owners to switch towards environment-friendly, cost-effective and energy efficient technologies.
The government along with environmentalists and donor agencies have tried to clamp down on the industry for its impact on local environment and even tried to introduce new technologies like Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln (VSBK) to replace the widely used Fixed Chimney Bull Trench Kilns (FCBTK). But the interventions failed to achieve the targeted results as the brick manufacturers could not adapt newer technologies.
“The VSBK technology was introduced about a decade ago as a substitute to FCBTK. When it first arrived in Nepal, it was a completely new thing for us and it required high initial investment which could not be adopted by every brick manufacturer,” said Mahendra Chitrakar, the president of FNBI.
FCBTK is widely used to produce bricks across the South Asian region. The inefficient combustion and heat loss in brick kilns using the FCBTK technology is considered to result in a waste of energy and large emissions of suspended particulate matter (SPM) and black carbon (BC). Various studies have found that the operation of brick kilns inside the Kathmandu Valley using the FCBTK has led to significant rise in harmful air pollutants such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide that have severe health consequences.
“We have always been criticised for contributing towards environmental pollution. But, now we want a win-win solution. With the introduction of efficient and adaptable cleaner technologies we could reduce the consumption of coal and control the emissions of harmful pollutants at the same time,” Chitrakar said.
According to him, many brick producers are already integrating cleaner and environment-friendly technologies such as Zig-Zag firing technology, a improved and retrofitted version of FCBTK that reduces coal consumption by almost 20 percent and emission of BC and SPM by almost 75 percent.
Unlike the traditional technology that uses a large amount of coal to fire the bricks, Zig-Zag firing uses powdered coal in small quantities and the fuel feeding zone is six times longer than that of FCBTK, resulting in a complete and cleaner combustion of fuel. Around 60 brick factories in the Kathmandu Valley have switched to Zig-Zag technology, said Bhisma Pandit, a brick sector energy expert. The only drawback of VSBK, he added, will be the change itself. “It might take some time for brick producers to adapt and get attuned to to technology.”
Chitrakar said the major challenge for them is the lack of trained and skilled people who could work on the development on the technology and help in its application in wider range. According to FNBI statistics, there are around 110 brick kilns inside Kathmandu Valley and around 850 across the country.
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