1.17bn rub of savings and first place for energy efficiency: TAIF-NK participating in TEF 2023

“Energy efficiency is the key task for Tatarstan”

The TEF has long been one of the key profile events in the country, and attention to the exposition and business programme of the forum is always increased. The official opening ceremony was attended by two deputy prime ministers of the Republic of Tatarstan — First Deputy Prime Minister of Tatarstan Rustam Nigmatullin, Deputy Prime Minister — Minister of Industry and Trade of the Republic of Tatarstan Oleg Korobchenko, Director of the Department of Competition, Energy Efficiency, and Ecology of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Irina Petrunina and other officials. Prime Minister of Tatarstan Alexey Pesoshin and Chairman of the State Council of Tatarstan Farid Mukhametshin arrived for the business part of the event.

“The TEF has long established itself as a platform — demonstration of modern energy-efficient technologies, discussion of topical issues in the industry, exchange of opinions, interaction of experts, representatives of federal and regional executive authorities and entrepreneurs. The development of economy is directly related to high-quality and reliable energy supply to consumers and sustainable efficient energy is the key to successful development. For the republic, energy conservation, energy efficiency improvement is a priority task," Rustam Nigmatullin emphasised from the stage.

“It is very important for the Ministry of Economic Development to understand what is happening in our constituent entities of the Russian Federation, what people are doing, what they live, what solutions they need. And all this is important in order to correctly and timely form state policy, including in the field of energy efficiency. We will have a great opportunity to talk about what is being done at the level of the Russian Federation, at the government level, what is happening in the regions, what kind of mutual communication, what kind of mutual assistance may be required," Irina Petrunina said.

Increasing efficiency from year to year

During the traditional tour of the exposition, which, by the way, this time broke all previous TEF records in terms of the number of participants and area and occupied 2,2 thousand square metres (a year ago it was a little more than a thousand), the official delegation stayed for a long time. Irina Petrunina, already on the way to the stand of TAIF-NK JSC, reacted in a purely feminine way: “Oh, how beautiful you have here, bright, like perfume in a perfumery," she appreciated the approach to the design of the company's stand.

In transparent, glittering bottles on several platforms, and indeed, attracting the attention of visitors to the exposition with a variety of colours and paints, the main (but not all) types of products were circling in round dances.

The minister of industry and trade was immediately interested in figures and technologies.

“TAIF-NK uses a unique technology. In the world, it is owned by only 3,9% of processors who process heavy residues. By the level of complexity, according to the Nelson index, TAIF-NK is one of the leaders in Russia. Indicator: 11,3 units while the average value for the industry in the country — 6. The result of 2022 for the extraction of light oil products is 87,4%. At the moment, we are the leader in this indicator in Russia. Besides, this indicator speaks about resource conservation: from each tonne of refined oil, we receive large volumes of light, high-quality, market-demanded petroleum products," the company's CEO presented the successes of TAIF-NK JSC.

And the work on further increasing both the convertion rate and the volume of extraction of light oil products in the company continues.

“Do you process oil?" Irina Petrunina, the director of the Department of Competition, Energy Efficiency and Ecology of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, clarified.

“Yes, oil. But the tar remaining after its processing also goes into advanced processing," Maksim Novikov explained. He also stressed that the company's work on improving energy efficiency is not limited to this alone: energy audits are carried out at enterprises, there are potential opportunities for improvement. For example, electric motors of some pump positions were retrofitted with frequency converters, which allowed to reduce electricity consumption. Moreover, the efficiency is so high that the payback of the event was achieved in just a year. Moreover, the implementation of the event brought additional improvements: increased service life, reduced noise and vibration, more precise regulation of the mode. In the heat supply of the enterprise in 2022, a lot of work was done to organise the steam supply scheme for all TAIF-NK units. This made it possible to balance the steam consumption regime between plants, ensure optimal loading of steam turbines and reduce the consumption of steam from the CHP. As a result, the steam consumption of the refinery was reduced by 7%. Similar measures have been carried out in gas consumption: TAIF-NK has organised a unified scheme for collecting hydrocarbon gas from all the company's plants with redirection to gas-using equipment. This event allowed to reduce the consumption of natural gas at the refinery by 14%.

If we talk about the effectiveness of all these measures carried out by the company, then in monetary terms they amounted to 1,17 billion rubles.

Oleg Korobchenko could not resist the remark:

“Probably, such achievements in saving natural gas are not too popular with fuel suppliers?" he asked, what caused the laughter of the participants.

Import substitution in oil refining

The current geopolitical situation pushes Russian companies to actively search for alternative solutions in the domestic market on a whole range of issues. Energy is no exception. TAIF-NK has been involved in this work for a long time. Suppliers have been selected, contracts have been signed.

“Two large-scale projects are being implemented under the import substitution programme in 2023. We are talking about replacing European high-voltage frequency converters with domestic ones, including devices for scheduled engine start-up at 15 MW," said the director general of TAIF-NK JSC.

The chief power engineer of the company, Vasily Vasilkov, later, becoming a guest of Realnoe Vremya off-site studio, revealed the topic a little deeper, including what 15 MW is in absolute value:

“This is a colossal power for a single engine power, I believe that there are no more such engines in Tatarstan. 15 MW is enough to provide power supply to residents of an entire district of Kazan without industrial consumers, including street lighting, during off-peak consumption," he explained.

According to the expert, the work of the energy service in modern realities is a fine line between two mutually complementary and, at the same time, mutually exclusive concepts: reliability and efficiency of the energy system of a huge enterprise.

“In my opinion, it makes no sense to engage in energy efficiency without having a strong, reliable power supply scheme behind you. Otherwise, any short-term interruption of energy supply can negate the results of energy efficiency work for a month," Vasily Vasilkov is sure.

“What is reliability?" he asked the journalist of Realnoe Vremya a question. And he answered himself: “Reliability is a reserve. To some extent, redundancy of power lines, redundancy of transformer or some kind of dynamic equipment. There is such a thing as a “hot reserve”, for example, the equipment is in operation, resources are spent on it, while there is no tangible benefit in the form of the release of marketable products from this equipment. It is necessary to turn on at an emergency moment and thereby ensures the reliability of the circuit. And energy efficiency is just about the opposite: about maintaining a balance of consumption — that is, not exceeding energy consumption. And this turns out to be a conflict. The task of energy services is to effectively engage in energy conservation, while not losing reliability.

All employees of the company are engaged in this work at TAIF-NK. The company has organised a transparent form of control over energy consumption, which allows daily analysis of compliance with the standards of consumption of each energy resource in the context of each plant shop. The effectiveness of this approach is confirmed by the overall results of the company's activities as a whole and noted by the leadership of the republic.

The best in energy efficiency

Within the framework of the Fuel and Energy Competition, the results of the republican contest “For the best achievements in the field of energy saving and energy efficiency improvement” are traditionally summed up. According to the results of 2022, the first degree diploma and the symbolic cup from the hands of Prime Minister of Tatarstan Aleksey Pesoshin were accepted by Director General of TAIF-NK JSC Maksim Novikov in the nomination “Fuel Industry”.

“Today's award is the result of TAIF-NK's work in the field of energy efficiency and energy conservation. We systematically work, improve the company's activities precisely by increasing energy efficiency and resource conservation. First of all, this is a reward for our power engineers, who systematically identify new ways to improve the operation of equipment, for the sake of its effective use, reducing energy costs. And each event has both economic and environmental results," Maksim Novikov commented on the victory.

This is not the first such award of the company. Last year, and also in this nomination, TAIF-NK was recognised as a laureate.

By the way, this time the diploma has not been the only one. As the chief power engineer of the company shared in a conversation with the journalist of Realnoe Vremya:

“We are also awarded as the best project in terms of digital technologies in the field of energy. For this work, the prime minister of Tatarstan noted our successes with a diploma of the third degree.

“There are no limits to perfection”

Another large-scale programme has recently been completed — testing and replacement of end and connecting couplings of 10 kV network cables. The problem with their unexpected failure is familiar to many large enterprises.

“Now the market offers new types of insulation materials for cable and wire products: cross-linked polyethylene, ethylene propylene rubber, etc. All of them have a number of advantages, but they require a very sensitive attitude to installation. The problem is that there should be no inhomogeneities in the insulation composition when installing the couplings: no inclusions, no scuffing in the places where the insulation layers are cut, no dust or air inclusions. All these are places of future local concentrations of electrical voltages, which in the future lead to the occurrence of partial electrical discharges in the insulation or on its surface, and those “eat through the electrical insulation” and sooner or later will lead to a breakdown of the insulation. We have repeatedly had cases of short circuits in the 10 kV network until 2022. And all these cases were associated with the failure of couplings. The most insidious thing here is that on average this process of “eating through” takes 3-5 years. And the second, no less important point: classical methods of testing cable lines do not reveal this problem," said the chief power engineer of TAIF-NK.

In 2022, the company decided to experiment: to test cable lines using a fundamentally new method — short-term high-voltage pulse. It sounds menacing, but in fact, it is a gentle, non-destructive method of control.

“We have checked all cable lines and identified places of local stresses. The conclusion: we have a very serious problem here. It was. For understanding: we have replaced a third of the cable couplings of the 10 kV network. A tremendous amount of work has been done, and I am sure that it is not in vain," Vasily Vasilkov stressed.

Now the method is used when accepting work from contractors for the installation of new connections, and in addition, we plan to use this practice on an ongoing basis — with an interval of at least once every 5 years, all cable lines will be tested again to be sure of the integrity of the power system.

To the question whether there is still a way for the company to move in matters of energy saving and improving the efficiency of using all types of resources, Vasily Vasilkov answered simply:

“There are no limits to perfection. In addition to that technologies are constantly changing, our operating modes are also changing, depending on market demands for a particular product. We find more economical equipment, install frequency converters. By solving issues in a complex, we also improve the quality of labour protection: vibration and noise in the premises of the pumping stations themselves are reduced. There are a lot of events, and the result from them, it seems to me, is very good. This process is continuous, I believe.