Triton: helping customers increase production by reducing energy losses.
A process innovator moves forward by focusing on specific industrial applications
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Saurabh Kumar, founder of Triton Synergies, loves engineering. A graduate of BIT Sindri, an engineering college in Eastern India, he worked for 15 years in large fertilizer firms. In 2007, he founded Triton in partnership with a Canadian company.
Triton offers technology to reduce energy losses in process industries by modifying the flow pattern of gases. Getting the first customer was tough. The Canadian company Saurabh had tied up with had experience in the field but presentations to prospective customers was always met with the same question “have you tried doing this in India?”. The first break came in a plant where Saurabh was part of the commissioning team: the Shahjahanpur plant of Kribhco Fertilizers . The application of the technology was to improve the fan operations. Triton studied the flow and realized that the air was being pushed in one direction. The company made the distribution of air more uniform by modifying the ducts at strategic locations. This allowed more uniform distribution and better heat transfer. The customer could increase the production without having to change the fan or the heaters. Doing so would have costed about 150 times the investment it made with Triton. Now Triton had its first reference customer. Two plants of IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited) implemented the same application: improving the operations of the fan. Making the suction pressure uniform by improving the fan operations also reduced vibrations. Triton demonstrated this in Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals, part of the large diversified K.K. Birla Group. Payback was within days.
The company made its next breakthrough in another application: this time in the gas turbine of a fertilizer plant. An important customer was Indo Gulf Fertilizers, a fertilizer company in the Aditya Birla conglomerate. Triton increased its power output by modifying the chilled air intake ducts. Power output of a gas engine depends on the flow through it and so colder denser air is preferred. It could also reduce the pressure drop by making the design of the silencer more aerodynamic after studying the flow patterns. The reduction in pressure drop increased the efficiency of the gas turbine. The problem Indo Gulf Fertilizers was facing was that the gas turbine was producing 1 MW less than expected. and with these two modifications augmented the capacity by 4 MW. Another application within the fertilizer industry was the reducing the back pressure on the gas turbine in in a IFFCO plant. Triton reduced the hydraulic resistance in the exhaust system by modifying the exhaust design . This led to reduction in the work done to discharge the gases into the atmosphere. The reduction of work done leads to a decrease in fuel consumption, reduced emissions and lowered exhaust temperature.
Triton now had enough experience with working with gas turbines in the fertilizer industry. It now moved on to to other industries. . Customers include Birla Copper, NALCO (aluminium) and Reliance Industries (petrochemicals). In all these cases, the company used its technology of studying the flow pattern and identifying abnormalities. The applications were different.
There are lessons here to understand energy efficiency innovation in the engineering industry. First, consider the source of innovation. Peter Drucker, in his book Innovation & Entrepreneurship, identified the “process need” as one potent source of innovation. It is a “weak link” in an existing process. The need is clearly established . In Triton’s case, customers already had the need to increase productivity by reducing losses. The innovation was to meet the need without investing in new equipment or substantial new design. To innovate, Triton needed two things. First, the technology expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamics to simulate flow and understand patterns of flow separation. Second, the contextual experience with the founder, Saurabh Kumar, had of how the equipment actually worked. The company combined these two expertise areas with ingenuity. It could offer aerodynamic systems that customers could implement easily. They could avoid large investments in new plant & machinery and lengthy shut down periods.
Then consider how the innovation spread. Markets are conservative. This is what Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, emphasized. Most potential customers would rather sit and watch and switch to a new technology only after there is adequate evidence that it does work. For a young company there is only one thing to do: focus on one customer segment and build out the application that this customer segment wants. Moore calls this the beachhead niche. Consider this like the tiny chink in the armor of the market, the one window of opportunity through which to penetrate. For Triton, this was the fan application in the fertilizer industry. Here the need already existed and the founder had connections. In Moore’s view, the company can move on to attack other adjacent niches, only from a leadership position within the beachhead. The company can knock down the next adjacent niche and then the next in a bowling alley strategy. At each stage it would leveraging product strengths and customer referrals. This is exactly what Triton did. It stared with the fan application in the fertilizer industry. Then it moved to the gas turbine application in the fertilizer industry and then to the gas turbine application in other industries. The company is now targeting these applications overseas.
The next adjacent niche would have been the gas based power plants. In India this niche has been hard to break into. Saurabh is taking the waste-to-energy route to tap into the power generation industry. . Municipal solid waste (MSW) is converted into a mixture of gases. This is a process of incomplete combustion and is called gasification. The gases will drive a gas engine and generate electricity. Saurabh has been working with a wood gasifier manufacturer for about 18 months to adapt their products to be used with MSW feedstock. One problem that they have had to solve was the problem of tar generation. Saurabh feels that the gasifier is now better designed because of his knowledge of controlling gas flows. Saurabh is in the process of setting up waste to energy plants in the towns of Srinagar (in J&K) and Rourkela (in Orissa). In Srinagar, the consortium Saurabh is a part of has been awarded the project by Srinagar Municipality. They are now awaiting the Power Purchase Agreement from state government. In Rourkela, the project is being developed in partnership with the Rourkela Municipal Corporation and the Township Authority of the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). The power produced will be sold to the SAIL township. Both projects are being developed on a BOOT (Build Operate Own Transfer) basis. Saurabh, along with other consortium members, is exploring funding options.
Time will tell if Saurabh will be successful. Waste to energy plants in India have had a poor track record. Weak realization of electricity sales and lack of assured quality and quantity waste have been the main culprits. Saurabh feels that he has a better offering to small municipalities. Yet, things could be easier. In particular, larger companies and utilities could proactively provide test bed opportunities. An engineer like Saurabh could focus on solving problems. Customers would benefit and financiers would have greater confidence.
The series of blogs is based on my experiences in working on the KfW SIDBI Innovation Finance Programme between 2013 to 2015. It was one of the most satisfying periods of my professional life. I worked with a wonderful team of Dr. Jürgen Bischoff, Mikael Henzler, Harsh Kaul, Rakesh Rewari, Rukmini Parthasarathy, Maike Lerch, Ravi Tyagi, Laxmi Narayana and Chinmay Dholakia. These series of blogs are my way of appreciating them. Triton Synergies who took a loan from SIDBI and Saurabh, during my interview, appreciated the speed at which SIDBI processed the loan. I thank Anubha Prasad of SIDBI for introducing me to Triton.
