Virudhachalam ceramic and refractory kilns burn firewood, coal, petcoke and RPO: what is the cluster's footprint?

Firewood is the biggest, then imported coal, petcoke and rubber process oil. About 300 small and micro units near Virudhachalam made about 60,000 t a year on 10,079 toe in 2015, 99% of it kiln fuel. Fossil CO2 comes to roughly 23,000 t, about 0.39 t per tonne, with wood CO2 reported separately.

Each kiln type has its own fuel

• Tunnel kilns, 5: three fire ceramics on RPO or LDO at about 7.5 tpd; two fire high alumina refractory bricks on petcoke and imported coal dust at about 20 tpd.
• Shuttle kilns, 20: batch firing of toys and art ware on RPO.
• Rotary kilns, 10: pulverised imported coal.
• Downdraft kilns, about 100 built, about 20 still firing: wood, mainly for the bottom boring sets steel plants buy.

Heat per kg tells you which kiln to fix

• Downdraft: 4,200 kcal per kg
• Shuttle: 3,779 kcal per kg
• Tunnel: 1,740 kcal per kg
• Rotary: 1,413 kcal per kg

The cluster's fuel bill

Firewood 18,000 t (4,140 toe), imported coal 4,800 t (3,360 toe), petcoke 1,440 t (1,267 toe), RPO 1,316 kL (1,211 toe) and 1.18 million kWh of TANGEDCO power (102 toe). Downdraft kilns took 41% of the energy and rotary kilns 34%. Energy was about half of production cost. A refractory tunnel kiln unit used about 644 toe a year; a shuttle kiln toy unit about 41.

What cuts fuel, and by how much

• Lighter tunnel kiln cars with hollow ceramic pipes, fibre blankets and cordierite blocks: about 3% of heat input, 52 toe a year across the cluster.
• Automatic air to fuel control and better burners on tunnel and shuttle kilns: about 3%, 178 toe.
• Combustion air preheating from shuttle kiln flue gas at 900 to 1,000 °C: about 7%, 57 toe.
• Moving downdraft work into continuous kilns is the big step: a downdraft kiln uses about 2.4 times the heat per kg of a tunnel kiln.

Estimate: cluster CO2 by fuel

• Imported coal: 3,360 toe x 41.868 GJ x 94.6 kg CO2 per GJ = about 13,300 t
• Petcoke: 1,267 toe x 41.868 x 97.5 = about 5,200 t
• RPO, taken as fuel oil: 1,211 toe x 41.868 x 77.4 = about 3,900 t
• Power: 1.18 million kWh x 0.675 = about 800 t; fossil total about 23,200 t, or 0.39 t per tonne of 60,000 t
• Firewood, biogenic and reported separately: 4,140 toe x 41.868 x 112 = about 19,400 t

An estimate using IPCC 2006 default factors and the CEA FY 2025-26 grid factor; RPO has no IPCC default of its own. Use your own fuel invoices and test reports.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads RPO, coal, petcoke and wood purchase invoices and TANGEDCO bills into a monthly record for your unit, keeping wood as biogenic, so you have your own figure per tonne when a steel plant or exporter asks.

• Your carbon number for buyers and banks
• Refractory kiln CO2 per tonne
• Are refractories covered by CBAM?

Sources: TERI, Cluster profile: Vriddhachalam ceramics and refractory industries (2015), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0

Last reviewed 2026-10-31. Data are TERI's 2015 estimates. Fuel mix shifts with prices (RPO was replacing LDO then); re-check against a newer profile if one appears.