How did nitrogen fertilizer companies cope with the financial crisis in 2009?

Save energy, reduce costs, take the initiative to ensure survival!

Hubei Fertilizer Uses ‘Three Tools’ to Cut Costs 2009-2-20 16:46:50 Keywords: Hubei Fertilizer. Employees at Hubei Fertilizer’s quality control center collect used batteries from gas detectors and oxygen meters, and use them in telephones or air conditioner remotes, thus giving these discarded batteries a second life. This is a detail regarding cost reduction for fertilizers in Hubei. To cut unnecessary expenses, Hubei Fertilizer has taken measures to reduce costs from three aspects. Manage to reduce costs. Equipment maintenance and raw material procurement account for over 90% of Hubei Fertilizer’s total costs. When a device breaks down, there are three options: purchasing a new one, having it repaired by the manufacturer, or fixing it oneself. The costs associated with these three options vary significantly. To this end, Hubei Fertilizer has particularly strengthened equipment management this year: repair whenever possible, and replace only when necessary. If the rotor of a boiler feed pump in a power plant fails, Gao Youping, an engineer from the maintenance workshop’s technical team, did some calculations: sending it for repair would cost 60,000 yuan, while purchasing a new rotor would cost 80,000 yuan. The labor cost for repairing it locally is at most 10,000 yuan. If both rotors can be repaired locally, it can save the company 140,000 yuan in expenses. To reduce procurement costs, Hubei Fertilizer has strengthened market analysis and forecasting, managed the procurement schedule for bulk commodities such as coal, and made reasonable inventory arrangements by taking into account various factors including the market, inventory levels, and transportation ； At the same time, strict management of material procurement plans is required, along with efforts to clear out excess inventory and optimize its structure. Technological upgrades to reduce costs. In 2009, energy-saving and consumption-reducing technical renovation projects at Hubei Fertilizer were continuously put into use. For example, by adding a new heater in the evaporation section of the urea plant and switching the high-pressure tempered water from the existing circulation heater to this new heater for heat exchange, along with introducing 0.4 MP of low-pressure steam and increasing the amount of steam supplied to the carbon dioxide compressor, it is possible to save 144 tons of main steam per day on average. On February 13, another waste steam recovery unit for the deoxidation tank was put into use in the gasification plant. This system eliminates the noise and waste associated with direct discharge of stripping low-pressure steam into the atmosphere. Based on the current rate of 50 tons of water supplied externally to the deoxygenation tank per hour, approximately 60 tons of deionized water can be recovered in one day. Details reduce costs. To reduce office expenses, the general manager of Hubei Fertilizer took the lead in using computer printing paper on both sides ； Employees in charge of ERP use the network and consultants at headquarters to stay in touch, trying to make as few long-distance calls as possible ； Employees at the quality control center collect the urea samples, crude oil samples, and coal samples after each analysis; once a sufficient amount has been accumulated, they are sent back to the sampling workshop to avoid waste. The quality control center used quantitative and qualitative filter paper for analysis in the past, which was expensive; now it uses large sheets of ordinary filter paper, which are cut into four smaller pieces using a paper cutter. One large sheet of filter paper can be used four times, thereby reducing the analysis costs. Hubei Fertilizer also implements unified management of the large air conditioners in the meeting rooms of its grassroots units, setting specific limits on temperature settings. At present, Hubei Fertilizer, in keeping with industry standards and based on design principles with meeting regulatory requirements as its goal, is formulating a production plan to ensure that the gasification unit (000968) meets specified standards. By improving production management and increasing the load on the unit, efforts are being made to enable the gasification unit to operate for extended periods of time ； At the same time, strictly enforce the cost accounting system, and establish and improve cost control networks at the workshop and team levels to maximize the management and control of controllable costs.

Hubei Fertilizer continues to work on water conservation and emission reduction. Keywords: Hubei Fertilizer. On December 9, the civil construction work for Hubei Fertilizer’s circulating water recovery project, which involved an investment of around 3.2 million yuan, was essentially completed; the conditions are now ripe for equipment installation, and the project is expected to be finished before the main production units come online. In recent years, Hubei Fertilizer has stepped up its efforts in environmental protection, carrying out renovations to wastewater treatment facilities, as well as initiatives to save water and reduce emissions and to make comprehensive use of waste materials. As a result, the company’s environmental performance has seen significant improvement. The circulating water recycling project involves treating wastewater that has been discharged before reusing it. Once completed, the project will be able to recover nearly 200 tons of water per hour, thereby reducing wastewater discharge by 200 tons per hour. This year, Hubei Fertilizer has successively implemented water-saving measures such as systems for recycling urea hydrolysis water and backwash water from sand filters, as well as efforts to detect and repair leaks in underground pipelines and conduct water balance tests. During the plant’s shutdown, a slag water tank was added; all the filtered water is reused as water for flushing slag, which saves fresh water and reduces wastewater discharge. These water-saving and emission-reduction projects save nearly 300 tons of water per hour. By December, Hubei’s discharge levels of wastewater from the fertilizer industry, as well as its COD emissions and overall compliance rate, all met the targets set by the headquarters, achieving the goal of zero major environmental pollution incidents.