In the context of manufacturing, energy conservation and carbon reduction are often equated with “spending money to buy a green card.”
But looking at the energy consumption ledger of Sichuan Kailiwei Technology Co., Ltd., this equation has been completely overturned. This company, with an annual production capacity of 1.5 million sets of all-steel radial tires, has used two technical reforms to prove that carbon reduction itself is a profitable business.
The two transformations completed by Kailiwei saved a total of 942 tons of standard coal annually and more than 1 million yuan in annual energy consumption.
Among them, the nitrogen recovery system in the vulcanization process replaced the steam setting project, and the comprehensive energy consumption in a single link dropped by 42%.
After continuous energy conservation in recent years, the comprehensive energy consumption of Kailiwei tires per ton is far lower than the advanced value of national standards.
The transformation of the vulcanization link is not to save energy but to “change the method”
The vulcanization process of tire production is one of the links with the highest energy consumption.
In the past, the common practice in the industry was steam setting, which was expensive and temperature fluctuations could easily lead to quality defects such as tire pockets.
Kailiwei’s approach is not to optimize the steam system, but to directly replace the steam shaping with a nitrogen recovery system.
This system recovers, purifies and recycles the high-pressure nitrogen used in the vulcanization process to 99.99% purity, with a recovery rate of over 70%.
After conversion, 6964 tons of steam are burned per year, which is equivalent to 859 tons of standard coal.
More critical is the second level of benefits: process parameters are more stable and tire product quality defects are reduced.
Chen Yong, deputy director of the company’s energy and power management center, put it very straightforwardly: “It has achieved the dual effects of product quality improvement and energy saving and carbon reduction.” In other words, this account is not just how much steam money is saved, but the use of a more stable process to create better tires, while also saving energy consumption – cost reduction and efficiency increase are two sides of the same thing.
Air compressor upgrade, replacing “extensive supply” with “precision feeding”
Compressed air is the power source of the tire production line, driving a large number of pneumatic equipment and manipulators.
A common problem with old power-frequency air compressors is that they always rotate at full speed regardless of whether they are in use or not, and their energy consumption remains high.
凯力威换上的两级压缩永磁同步变频式螺杆空压机，直接改写了供气逻辑。
The new unit is equipped with a microcomputer online control system, which can automatically adjust operating conditions according to real-time production load, increasing gas production by more than 20% and reducing energy consumption by about 20%.
Over the course of a year, 670,000 kWh of electricity was saved, equivalent to 83 tons of standard coal.
This is essentially a switch from “extensive supply” to “precision feeding”: the equipment is no longer idling, and every kilowatt hour of electricity corresponds to real output.
How can we achieve a 42% reduction in energy consumption?
From a horizontal comparison, the digital transformation of Eagle Tire’s Qingzhou factory is expected to reduce overall energy consumption by 10%-15%, and the comprehensive energy consumption of Linglong Tire’s energy and carbon management platform is expected to drop by 8%-11% in the first year after its implementation.
Kailiwei’s 42% single-link reduction does not rely on a single technology, but a fundamental reconstruction of the energy consumption structure of the core process – not patching the old system, but directly changing the track.
The report did not disclose the total investment in these two renovations.
However, if the annual cost saving exceeds 1 million yuan, the investment payback period will not be too long.
More importantly, Kailiwei got the ticket to become a provincial “green factory”.
This newly promoted small and medium-sized enterprise in Sichuan Province in 2026 is rewriting green manufacturing from a “cost item” to a “competitiveness item.”
