Hindustan Zinc going all out to increase green footprint

In an effort to reduce consumption of fresh water, Hindustan Zinc has installed reverse osmosis effluent treatment plants (ETPs) at all its smelting locations, resulting in the reduction of its fresh water footprint and also maintaining zero discharge status, a company statement said here Friday.

The company has also installed adiabatic cooling towers (ACTs) to reduce water wastage, in the form of evaporation losses of almost 80 percent, by operating in a closed circuit.

It said innovation and waste utilization has been a key to Hindustan Zinc's reduction of carbon footprint and increase in its green footprint.

To give impetus to green energy, Hindustan Zinc has commissioned 273.5 MW of wind farms in five states: Gujarat (88.8 MW) and Karnataka (49.40 MW), Rajasthan (88.8 MW), Maharashtra (25.5 MW) and Tamil Nadu (21 MW).

"The company's entire capacities of wind power generation has been registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) programme of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)," it said.

"Hindustan Zinc has been successful in reducing annual average emissions of 497,209 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent, by producing 536,882 MW per year (average) equivalent amount of clean energy."

Other than wind projects, company's 9.4 MW waste heat recovery Steam Turbine Generation (STG) and 21 TPH Low Calorific Value Gas (LCV) boilers for steam generation projects are also registered under the CDM.

The total registered project has helped Hindustan Zinc reduce is carbon footprint by 583,685 tCO2e per annum. The company also reduced carbon footprint by 116,992 tCO2e from initiatives other than the registered CDM projects, it said.

The compan''s research and development efforts have materialized to utilize slag, a waste from zinc process, in cement manufacturing.

"The fly ash, which is a waste material from thermal power plants, is utilized fully by cement industries. Over 1.3 million green plantations cover the company's premises. Hindustan Zinc is producing 34.4 MW of power through waste heat recovered from roasters," it added.