green earth intiatives

In the last posting I described about global warming and steps to mitigate this phenomena
In this posting I would like to share my experience in the industry where I was working on this green earth initiatives.
I was heading a ceramic plant which is a fuel intensive factory. You may be aware that the special types of clays and stones are mixed and baked in furnaces.The factory is located with in the city limits and stricter emission norms are to be adhered.
The furnaces are of high temperature and usually oil fired. (our daily consumption of Oil was 12000 liters per day)We were using ultra high sulphur diesel which was expensive and at the same time it emits pollutants like carbon and soot.The factory also requires steam used for drying of molds. for this purpose we were using boilers using coal .This was also polluting the atmosphere.
As a green earth initiative we decided to covert all furnaces from oil fired to gas (LPG) fired. There were 7 furnaces and one of them was a continuous kiln which means it works 24x7 and can not be switched off.Being a process industry we can not afford to close even other furnaces for a long period. The main job was to change the oil fired burners to dual fired burners in quickest possible time and some of them incitu(on line). with a meticulous planning this job was accomplished with out affecting the production schedule. We also installed 2nos 25 ton LPG bullets in factory premises to ensure continuous supply of gas. In the next step the boilers were revamped and cover ted coal fired boilers to gas fired one. With this initiative we could reduce carbon em mission and reduce pollution . A step in maintaining green earth. In addition lot of other initiatives were taken like reprocessing of waste water and using for gardening,rain water harvesting, use of CFL tubes ,solar lamps, use of LPG gas for heating & cooking purpose in the canteen etc.
Electrical energy was reduced by installing capacitors at both load end and supply end , installing variable speed drives for compressors and motors etc
Any step towards saving energy is a step towards saving the earth