Strategic and Sustainable Thinking Reduces Waste and Saves Water

Mar 9, 2020, 15:51 PM by Sydney Lindquist

Hexion's Hope, AR plant recently was able to reduce their waste stream, cut fresh water usage, and recovered thousands of pounds of product. Keep reading to find out how.

Customer and product changes at Hexion’s Hope, AR plant recently left the plant with more industrial process water than they could consume. A little background is in order: some of the resin products require water as a raw material, while others require a step to remove water, thereby generating the process water. When that got out of balance they were forced to load the excess onto trucks for disposal.

Not willing to accept this as the new status quo, individuals from the plant, Engineering, Six Sigma, Environmental, R&D and sales came together to find a solution. After evaluations, testing and trials they were successful in using this process water as a raw material for formaldehyde production, something that had not been done before.

What were the benefits last year?

Reduced their waste stream by 2.5 million lbs.
Eliminated 52 truck shipments from the roadways
Reduce fresh water usage by 300,000 gallons
Recovered over 60,000 lbs. of formaldehyde for resin production
Recovered 60,000 lbs. of methanol

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