Background

Firozabad, the glass capital of India, is a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh that accounts for roughly 70% of the total glass production in the small-scale sector. The molten glass, which is required for making of bangles and other principal glass products, is melted in pot furnace (a circular dome shaped furnace with 8 – 12 pots lined at the periphery that holds molten glass which operates at a temperature of around 1,400 0C). These pots, used for holding the molten glass are made of a ceramic mixture and are manufactured locally by various pot makers. As regular operation characteristic of pot furnace operation, the pots break inside the furnace after several days of use The number of days of useful pot life inside the furnace is dependent on several factors including the colour of glass being processed inside the pot. For instance, the red colour glass due to its inherent chemical properties has most corrosive effect on the pot surface and subsequently on the pot life. Therefore replacement of damaged pot results in huge energy and monetary wastage. It’s not just the energy that is lost as a part of the furnace operating at a high temperature but also the damage to the pot inside the furnace results in huge loss of production since the glass drained out of the broken pot is wasted.

Another important aspect of the prevailing situation is that replacement of pots in the pot furnace is undertaken in extremely difficult conditions since the operators have to replace the pot in running furnace and are thus exposed to extremely high temperature conditions during the pot changing process. On the other hand, the pot makers are a marginalized community completely dependent on pot making as the sole occupation. The unreliability of pot’s life in the pot furnace further adds to the gravity of the situation as in many cases of short pot life, the pot maker has to bear the monetary loss of pot breakage. There had been a long felt need in the cluster for an intervention which could facilitate in enhancing the life and reliability of the pots being used. To address the long standing issue of unreliable and short pot life inside the pot furnace and to address the ever increasing livelihood challenge in front of pot making community in Firozabad, WII with support from Small Grants Program of UNDP/GEF, undertook the challenging project titled “Techno-social intervention for improving the reliability of pots in glass melting furnaces; Potential of huge energy savings, GHG reduction and sustainability of livelihoods.”

Objective

Since the pot makers are a marginalized link in the overall glass manufacturing chain and pot making is the sole livelihood source for the community, therefore, it was imperative that any intervention leading to introduction of any sophisticated and capital intensive technology would lead to elimination of an entire community from the glass processing map of Firozabad. Hence, WII undertook a technosocial intervention in the Firozabad glass cluster with the following specific objectives: Improving the reliability and life of pots in glass melting furnace, Sustaining of livelihood of pot makers community by developing an indigenous improved pot making process, Improvement in production output and specific energy consumption of the glass melting units by reduction in breakdown due to pot failure, Reduction in GHG emissions due to reduced specific energy consumption in pot furnace and increase in specific output by reduction in waste of glass melt.

Activities

The major project activities that were undertaken towards achievement of project objectives include:

• Enlisting of pot makers and conducting socio economic survey at community level: A survey exercise was designed and implemented to reach out to individual pot makers and discuss the problems and issues faced by them in technology as well as commercial and social aspects of day-to-day activities. The survey result proved extremely useful in determining the prevailing situation regarding the socio economic aspects of pot making as a livelihood source.
• Development of raw material processing mixer: The mixer is a new addition to the pot making process wherein a single mixer can serve the requirements of several pot making units. The design and development of the mixer has been done by utilizing only the locally available resources and the equipment has large replicability potential in the cluster. With the introduction of mechanized mixing equipments, the uniformity of various physical properties across the volume of the material has been ensured and the duration of labour intensive manual mixing operation substantially reduced.
• Manufacture and Testing of Improved pots in Pot furnace: Three batches of pots were tested in the pot furnace operation for establishing the useful life realizable from the improved pots. Each of the batches was manufactured from the locally available resources after removing the material and process related shortcomings in the existing pot making process. Three different pot material compositions were identified for making of improved as well as control test pots based on various varieties of clay and grog. The trial and testing activity of the pots was carried out at the glass processing unit (bangle making) of Navjeevan Glass Industries.

• Reduction in GHG emissions which is directly linked to the reduction in natural gas consumption by avoiding frequent replacement of pots in the pot furnace
• Huge energy losses are associated with replacement of pots in a pot furnace as the entire operation is done while the pot furnace is running at temperature of over 1,400 0C, hence increase in pot life has a proportionate reduction in these losses
• Since the pot replacement operation used to expose workmen to very high temperatures and difficult working conditions, thus less frequent instances of pot breakage would also lead to lesser times the workmen are exposed to high temperatures inside the furnace, and hence improvement in workplace environment
• The margins involved in pot making had been coming down since last several years resulting into shutdown of many units but with the improved pots decreasing the monetary losses incurred by the end user (glass melting unit), the pot makers can now demand a higher price with a higher profit margin for the same.