The Fertilizer Association of India (FAI)
The Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) is a non-profit and non-trading company representing mainly the fertiliser manufacturers, distributors, importers, equipment manufacturers, research institutes and suppliers of inputs. The Association was established in 1955 with the objective of bringing together all parties concerned with the production, marketing and use of fertilisers with a view to:
- Assist the industry in improving its operative efficiency
- Find solutions to the problems facing the fertiliser industry and agriculture
- Promote the balanced and efficient use of fertiliser
- Encourage the use of more and better plant foods
- Promote consideration and discussion of all questions that contribute to sound agricultural practices
FAI has access to the information on Indian fertilizer industry covering almost all manufacturers. Information on their profile, performance, capacity utilization, energy consumption, energy conservation measures implemented and their impact, constraints in further implementation of energy saving measures, technology licensors, equipment suppliers are avaiable with the organization, partly as published data and partly as confidential information.
FAI is engaged in monitoring of performance of fertiliser plants with respect to various operational parameters like energy consumption, water consumption, causes for downtime in plants, loss time accidents and other causes and concentration of pollutants in effluents and emissions. FAI also carries studies related to energy and environment. Status papers are prepared , presented and published. Benchmarking exercises are also carried out periodically.
FAI also provides platform for exchange of information on all aspects related to fertilizer production through a number of Group Discussions, Workshops, Seminars and Symposia. FAI also brings out a monthly publication, “Indian Journal of Fertilisers”, which provides opportunity to exchange experience on various aspects of fertiliser production, distribution and consumption.
FAI is working as the sector expert agency to Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) for implementation of Perform Achieve Transfer Scheme. Under this scheme, 29 designated consumers (DC’s) have been identified. This covers all the ammonia / urea manufacturing plants. All DC’s have submitted their performance data to FAI / BEE in prescribed Form. FAI also assisted BEE in arriving at targets for reduction in energy consumption.
Association of FAI in developing the “ Action to Achieve (A2A) Toolkit
FAI associated itself with the development of an energy assessment tool kit called as Assessment to Action (A2A), developed by IIP & ICF Marbek. The Toolkit was first developed for Chinese plants and later modified and fine tuned for Indian fertilizer industry.
All the improvement measures in the toolkit’s library were reviewed and more feasible options were added. For each of the identified technological options, FAI provided realistic data regarding costs, energy saving, cost benefit analysis etc. The modified Toolkit was further subjected to field testing / validation and its fine tuning was carried out by visiting two plants.