Alstom has started producing regional commuter and transit trains for RRTS Phase 1’s Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut semi-high-speed rail track. This is a 15-year contract awarded to Alstom in May 2020 to design, produce, and supply 210 regional commuter and transit train cars, as well as comprehensive maintenance services.
The heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) segment in India owes its growth to the investments made in the commercial, industrial, infrastructure and residential projects. According to a study, the Indian HVAC market size is expected to grow to $31,598.6 million by 2030, at a CAGR of 16.0% during the forecast period of 2020–2030. Today the paramount importance of industrial HVAC systems is acknowledged by many manufacturing sector insiders, though it remains a relatively lesser talked about subject. A few decades ago, indifference was even more prevalent, but only a few people with a vision and purpose realized the significance of industrial HVAC and worked towards the objective of developing technologies and products.
Based in Mumbai, ENCON Group of companies had pioneered the manufacturing of industrial HVAC components with its foundation in the year 1990. Today a leading manufacturer and exporter of Axial Flow Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) Fans, Cooling towers, fan stacks, FRP Grating and Pultruded FRP Sections. The group is committed to the cause of energy-saving and sustainable manufacturing.
At the helm of the ventures at ENCON is the Founder and Chairman & Managing Director Rajendra Kumar Sharma, who along with Late S J Basu established the company to develop and manufacture Axial Flow Fans through innovation and quality. In a conversation with Machine Maker, Rajendra Kumar Sharma and Chief Operations Officer Avinash Rai spoke about the legacy and future of ENCON, and about its continued dedication to offer premium quality products with a guaranteed reduction in power consumption.
Developing Indigenous Technology with Energy Saving
The story began with Recondo Cooling Towers Private Limited bagging a project of constructing cooling towers around 1975. Due to the unavailability of fans from the then leading manufacturer of fans, Recondo decided to set up a fan manufacture facility at Worli with the appointment of S J Basu as the technology expert. Trying to collaborate with an American company, the technology transfer was extremely expensive. Mr Basu met Professor A K Rao, who suggested seeking consultation from National Aeronautical Laboratory and Hindustan Aeronautical Laboratory at Bangalore.
Rajendra Kumar Sharma, a mechanical engineer from VJTI Mumbai, used to work with Recondo in 1981. “I left Recondo in 1989 and started ENCON India on 1st January 1990 with an initial capital of ₹8000. Mr Basu also agreed to join hands with us, and got the support of Aditya Birla Group whom we had earlier provided a solution for energy-saving fans”, remembers Mr Sharma. Initially, ENCON started by serving the cooling tower segment in refineries, petrochemical, fertilizer and power plants by manufacturing the cooling tower fans.
“Once we started manufacturing the fans, Mr Basu advised that we can design fans on the basis of pressure, RPM, airflow, motor power etc., depending on the applications. The fans can be of sizes from 1 meter up to 10 meters. The second project we started was to serve the refineries like IOCL, HPCL and BPCL who were using imported products. ENCON developed the technology indigenously, not just as a substitute, but with an additional energy-saving feature. The technology got accepted and established at the global level,” explains Mr Sharma.
Saving Energy Globally through FRP Fans
Today ENCON’s presence is in 32 countries like South East Asia, Middle East, the USA and Europe. Their flagship product is an energy-efficient FRP fan that has applications in cooling towers, air-cooled condenser systems, textile, mining and even in tea plantations. Avinash Rai adds, “We started manufacturing energy saving fibreglass-reinforced plastic or FRP fans.” The FRP has contributed to increasing the strength of the fans by almost double and energy savings up to 25-30%.
Rajendra Kumar Sharma says, “We have manufactured different models to cater to the energy saving. It basically means our products are of higher efficiency. If you take any system into account, one that has a higher efficiency has lower power consumption. So is the concept with the aerodynamic design. ENCON has improved the efficiency from 80% to 90%.” Compared to similar models of China or Thailand made where there is a drop in efficiency, unlike Encon’s products Mr Sharma points out. “Three years ago, we supplied fans for Taiwanese refinery, who was using fans from an international manufacturer working at 300 hp. ENCON fans replaced them with the energy consumption of 200 hp.”
Higher Efficiency with Low Maintenance
As for Cooling Towers, ENCON has designed products that have capabilities higher than 100%. Rajendra Kumar Sharma says, “We are manufacturing total cooling tower system using Pultrusion technology with FRP structure.” The company not only designs as per the specifications provided by the customers but also innovated keeping in mind the requirements of the future. With a lesser amount of modifications, the tower capacity can be enhanced within the given stipulated space and time. The Cooling Towers designed by ENCON are strict as per the customer specification mainly the water quality and fills because of which the towers have super low maintenance and lowest possible downtime and unmatched performance.
Speaking of the company’s facilities Mr Sharma says that four of the group’s companies are situated in the outskirts of Mumbai and eight facilities are in Sinnar, Nashik. Sinnar is also housing the Research & Development cell of Encon Group. ENCON International is the dedicated division that looks after the export market. Rajendra Kumar Sharma points out that due to competition a lot of entities without proper technical knowledge and robust background have entered the sector. “Big manufacturers are selling cooling towers with a capability of 70% to 75%. They are not providing the tower capability as mentioned in the agreement papers.”
COO Avinash Rai elaborates by making an important point. “A lot of malpractices are going on regarding cooling towers and it is the customer who suffers. At ENCON we have concentrated to solve the customer issues at the very initial stage itself. The solutions we offer may be high in terms of investment but the maintenance, downtime and operational costs are extremely low. Customers are coming to ENCON for solutions not only with the fans but also for cooling towers and other products. This is because we are able to improve the efficiency of their existing system.”
Growing Together: Team Encon
Encon is having a vibrant team, possessing great exposure and experience of working with the industry for many years and growing in their ranks over time. Joined as an administrative assistant, A K Rai is serving Encon as its CEO. Having saved more than a billion units of energy and much more in associated costs for their customers, he aspires to share energy-saving benefits across the world. Joined as a Sales Executive in 2003 Avinash Rai is now the COO. Avinash focus is to develop Encon Group as a one-stop solution for Cooling Towers worldwide. Designing Highly Efficient Counterflow and Crossflow Induced Draft Cooling Towers has been his strengths. PB Nair since 1991 with his expertise in Project Management has shown successful project execution not only in India but also in countries like Middle East, South East Asia and Russia.
Joined as a Design Engineer, today Ramkrushna Shelke is heading the Manufacturing of Encon Group. Under the guidance of Mr Sharma, got an opportunity to lead the design & development of different processes to enhance the quality of product and productivity like investment casting, Composite compression moulding, FRP Pultrusion, Enclosed painting booth, Laser cutting, Infusion, LRTM, Silicon Bagging, can develop any kind of metallurgy and composite product with that process as per customer requirement and duty conditions. Rishabh Parekh, an Engineering graduate, joined in 2017 as Assistant Manager – Marketing and now leading Encon in the field of Induced Draft CoolingTowers with the optimum thermal design for catering for the ever-increasing heat loads during the plant operations throughout the globe.
Embracing Advanced Technology towards Future
As for the future of industrial HVAC, Avinash says, “The seawater-based cooling systems will surely continue to operate, but will encounter a high operational cost. We are working towards enhancing the quality of fans (in-house) and use of high-quality fill which in seawater based cooling tower applications which will definitely reduce the operating costs”. He adds “With the water getting scarce, cooling tower systems will not be used much in future. The freshwater ( River water) based cooling towers will diminish due to scarcity and stringent norms by the government over the use of recycled water and expensive RO water treatment plants which will enforce the users to rely heavily on air-cooled condensers. The sector will switch to air-cooled condensers for low operating cost utilizing the atmospheric air. ENCON will get into air-cooled condensers in five years down the line.” Today when the government is pushing towards self-reliance in manufacturing, ENCON’s products are developed indigenously for decades. ENCON FRP Fans and Cooling Towers provide High Performance, Superior Quality, Guaranteed lowest operational cost. Added to that, the products come with flexible payment terms and conditions, and also offer the best after-sales and support services.
Internationally governments have come up with subsidized energy saving schemes. Unsure of the Indian government’s policy on this, Avinash says, “They have a thumb rule saying that 1 kW of energy saved is equal to 998 grams of carbon credit. So, on the basis of the carbon footprints governments offer a lot of schemes and subsidized funding for these projects.”
“Because of the higher efficiency of our products, energy-saving has a direct and cascading impact on the process. Hence it’s very critical equipment, whether it’s a power plant where the turbine performance depends on the condenser’s vacuum, which is directly connected to Cooling Towers or Refineries, where the process production is determined by the column pressures which is directly impacted by Cooling Tower and Air Fin Coolers. So, at the end of the day it is the customer who is going to gets benefitted,” says Avinash.
“People need to understand the quality to economy ratio or economy to quality ratio. With that statement ENCON Group will continue to grow with the conviction to quality and innovation”, concludes Rajendra Kumar Sharma.
