Ingeniero

Company: Industrias Unicon, C.A. (Owned by ArcelorMittal Tubular Products)
Location: La Victoria, Aragua, VENEZUELA
Position: Manager of manufacturing technical support
Area: Process improvement / Environment management
Dates: August 15th 2009 – February 28th 2010

|N° |DEVELOPMENT|The most important |
| | |competency elements|
|Introduction |
|1 |UNICON has a hot dip galvanizing plant where galvanized tubes for fluidsconduction are produced. In the middle of |PE1.1 |
| |2009 the company changed its policy of Health, Safety and Environment. It was included a strictest issue for the |PE1.4 |
| |responsibility with the environment. Immediately, as manager of manufacturing technical support I proposed a general |PE2.2 |
| |objective in order to reducethe consumption of water in all the processes of the company and I started this project |PE3.4 |
| |in the most consumer of water which was the Hot Dip Galvanizing Plant. | |
| |Before I start this project, the company had decided to install a water treatment plant for all the waste water of ||
| |the plant with a budget of 1.5 million dollars. The water treatment plant was already designed for the treatment of | |
| |25.000 m3 per year. At the moment when I reviewed the project with the engineer in charge I wondered if it was | |
| |possible to reduce the consumption of water in the plant. Here was when the projectbegan. | |
|Background |
|2 |The Hot Dip Galvanizing Plant is a process where steel tubes are coated with a layer of zinc in order to provide them|PE1.1 |
| |with high resistance against rust. Theprocess const of five phases: preparation of surface, galvanizing, elimination|PE1.2 |
| |of excess of zinc, cooling and pasivation of zinc. Preparation of surface is the process of degreasing and pickling |PE1.4 |
| |with rinses between them. | |
||Both processes rinses and cooling are performed with water. | |
|3 |As initial condition I found that the average of consumption of water in the Hot Dip Galvanizing Plant was about |PE1.2 |
| |7.000 Liters per hour with a maximum of 11.250 Liters per hour needed firstly for the dissipation of heatin the |PE2.1 |
| |process of cooling of galvanized tubes and secondly to maintain the rinses with low levels of contamination. I |PE2.2 |
| |realize that there were other apparent advantages of constantly renovation of water in rinses and cooling tank: |PE2.6 |
| |Minimum concentration of zinc in pasivation solution,preheating of water for degreasing solution, dissolution of | |
| |particles to low levels for waste water and finally the PH control of waste water. | |
| |Total annual consumption of water for the plant was approximately 25.000 m3 with a production of galvanized tubes of | |
| |20.000MT which...