“The team at our Wacol site is genuinely passionate about their impact on the local environment and strives to deliver the best outcome from the most optimized investment.”
Chris Day, Site Manager
allnex, the leading supplier of specialty chemicals, offering a broad range of coating resins, additives and crosslinkers for use on wood, metal, plastic and other surfaces, is pleased to announce the efforts of the allnex Wacol team to take actions to reduce environmental impact has been met with great success. At allnex we are committed to sustainable manufacturing and our utility reduction projects reflect this ideology.
Allnex - Wacol fosters a culture of sustainable energy management through continuous improvement and innovation managed through the site Energy team. Through targeted projects, the site energy footprint has been reduced across Electricity, Natural Gas Usage and Nitrogen Consumption. The site goal is to develop full visibility on how each utility is used so it may be fully optimized for the best benefit to both allnex and the environment. In each case, a number of changes have attributed to enviable energy reductions across the site.
- Electrical Energy Consumption Reduced by 30% over 3 years.
- CO2 Saving of 536 Metric Tonnes per year
This was accomplished through the following projects;
- Power Factor Correction – by improving the site power factor and reducing wasted power the site was able to reduce the energy charges from the local utility supplier
- Lighting Study and replacement LED Lighting – replaced plant lighting with LED to reduce power consumption and maintenance costs while improving light in operational areas.
- Cooling Tower and Pump Variable Speed Drives to reduce power usage when cooling water is not required in the plant.
- Variable Speed air compressor to reduce power when compressed air is not in demand.
- Heating hot water tank with steam generated with waste heat from the site fume incinerator.
- Preheat emulsion plant process water with air compressor waste heat.
- Removing hydraulic system connections so they can be individually turned off when not used
- Gas Reduction – 36% over 3 years. Saving of 21,000GJ/year
- CO2 Saving of 1094 Metric Tonnes per year
- Thermal oxidizer waste heat recovery – recovering the waste heat from the site thermal oxidizer into the hot oil system used for heating process vessels and generating steam.
- New heater with variable speed driven fan for better efficiency with changing loads.
- Reduced nitrogen incineration and reduced cycle times on reactors, improving efficiency.
- Nitrogen Reduction – 70% over 3 years. Saving of 70,000L/month of cryogenic nitrogen.
- CO2 Saving of 230 Metric Tonnes per year
- Progressing away from Nitrogen sparging based processing techniques.
- Meagre air system to provide a safe atmosphere in tank inerting instead of using cryogenic nitrogen.
- Optimizing Nitrogen flows to reactors during processing.
- Reduced Waste to Landfill
The site reduced the environmental impact through smart waste management and reduced waste generation. This has been through some of the following projects;
- Reduced regular site waste to landfill by recycling over 50% of waste.
- Sending flammable waste for energy recovery (incineration) at a cement kiln rather than being sent to landfill.
- Sending water born waste for use in soil remediation rather than being sent to landfill.
“The team at our Wacol site is genuinely passionate about their impact on the local environment and strives to deliver the best outcome from the most optimized investment,” says Chris Day, Site Manager. “While saving energy is a common business goal for many organizations, we take it as personal challenge. I’m unbelievably proud of my team for both the efforts and outstanding results.”
For more information about the Wacol improvements, please contact Chris Day, Site Manager.
