Every New Year gives us new hopes, new goals and, Yea… Obviously, New Resolutions.  2014 was a great year for me; a Happening Year.Every year I used to set some new resolutions, but let me frank, i never met any of them 😀 But the year 2014 gave me a different experience. Yaar, I met some of my resolution. Ahaaaaa!!!

The first successful resolution was about starting my own website. I need to thank one of my great friend Vijay S Paul who is always an inspiration for me to start this website. He is an amazing  Speaker and a Nice Blogger(See www.vijayspaul.com). I am also grateful to my dear friends Satheesh , Manu & Shameer who helped me in the technical side. Even though i am just stepping in to the world of writing, i feel really great after reading my own article 😛

The second one was about joining for M-Tech. Thanks to my parents who always reminded me about PG. At last, I joined for M-Tech in Applied Electronics at CISAT, Muvatupuzha. Frankly Speaking, I felt quite odd to sit in lectures and write internal exams after a break of 2.5 years from my graduation.

Third one was also one of the goal of my firm NeoGreen Labs. The goal was to launch one product in 2014 and I am really happy to tell you that we have launched one product (an Industrial product; SafeWeld) during October 2014 and it got good response from our potential customers.  Also, We are all set to launch our new product ( A Semi-Commercial one; Aquavision ). If everything goes fine, we will launch it during the first week of January 2015. Thanks to Shibili Rahman & Er. Cherian Issac for all their support for developing both the products.

Now, at the end of 2014 while looking back, i am feeling happy. But life has to go on and I am waiting for 2015. New Year, New Hopes, new Resolutions… I wish everyone will have a great year ahead.

Happy New Year

Carborundum Universal Limited (CUMI), is a Multi-Billion company leading by Murugappa Group. CUMI is one of the giants, dealing with abrasives, Electro-Minerals, Industrial Ceramics, Super Refractories etc. They have a number of factories which are distributed around the globe. To know more about CUMI, kindly go through their website.

Recently Team NeoGreen Labs visited one of their factories; which is situated near Edapally, where they manufacture  Brown Aluminum Oxide Grains from Bauxite. The factory is spread over almost 100 acres.

Few days before our visit, We got a picture of the Typical Kerala Effect;  Labour Strike at CUMI. This strike seems really interesting. The workers start their strike by 9.30am, with all Inquilab Zindabad but they stop it by 10.am and then go to their work. Thank God, We reached there after the Strike Session, by around 11 am.

Our goal was to see and understand the processing of bauxite to a material which can be used for the manufacturing of abrasives. This process is done inside a furnace (Kiln). The raw materials has been added to the kiln at regular intervals and the materials are melted using Electric Arc formed by three huge electrodes. The working temperature is above 1000 Degree Celsius and so, the kiln is cooled using water. One batch consists of 28 tons of raw material and it takes long 20hrs to melt them. Later it is allowed to cool and it takes almost two weeks for the complete cooling. Then the frozen material is crushed in to grains using a crusher which makes lot of dust and later the grains are transported to the manufacturing unit using a huge conveyer belt system. The entire atmosphere was so hot and noisy and i got surprised to see, workers walking and working in that severe atmosphere.

Then we visited the power and control setup of the kiln and electric arc system. There are almost 5 kilns and each kiln has its own control station. The three phase transformer of   Electric ARC rod is manufactured by General Electric and each Arcing Rod takes an AC current of 6000A !!!

We also visited the 66KV Substation of CUMI. I never saw such a huge substation and controls before. They told us that CUMI is buying electric power from open market (till then i didn’t had much idea about the electricity supply in open market, but they explained it well) during night time at a lower rate. CUMI also has a 12MW hydel electric power project at Maniyar Kerala.

The best part of this factory is that, there is no waste except the Dust produced during the crushing of cooled material. All other materials are converting in to different products. They are also trying to improve their overall energy efficiency by continuously improving their manufacturing process. And, I am sure that this may be the two main reasons that keep CUMI the best in their domains.

Note: We were invited to do a feasibility study on improving the efficiency of their manufacturing process. I don’t have any Photos since we were not allowed to take our mobiles inside the campus. Er. Shibili Rahman, Er. Cherian Varghese and Mr. Baby Philip were with me for this visit.