Environmental benchmarking survey of 4 European UPR units

Résumé du document

Environmental benchmarking is today a growth area. Generally speaking, benchmarking involves the comparison, ranking or rating of different business processes, units or companies against standards. The aim is to identify ways of improving the performance of operations, systems and processes.

The present survey deals with internal environmental benchmarking, which involves the comparison of the environmental performances of 4 units manufacturing the same product: Unsaturated Polyester Resins (UPR). These units are located in 4 European CRAY VALLEY plants (Figure 1): Drocourt (France), Miranda de Ebro (Spain), Sant Celoni (Spain) and Stallingborough (UK). The 5th CRAY VALLEY European UPR Unit, located in the Zwickau plant, was not considered in this survey since its UPR production is to be phased out.

This work was conducted during 6 months within the Quality-Safety-Environment Department of the CRAY VALLEY Company. CRAY VALLEY, together with CCP and Sartomer (in the USA), is the second largest resins manufacturer in the world and constitutes the Resins Division of ATOFINA, the chemical branch of the TOTAL FINA ELF group. Its 5 main product lines are: Structural Resins (among which UPR), Coating Resins, Waterborne Polymers, Hydrocarbon Resins, and Powder & Hard Resins.

UPR are thermosetting plastics that can be used in two types of applications : reinforced applications (composite materials made of UPR reinforced with fibreglass) for building and sanitary ware, boat and naval construction, automotive sector,…, and non-reinforced applications among which polyester concrete, gelcoat production, buttons and varnishes. In 2000, the production of UPR amounted to 88 kT in France (CRAY VALLEY's market share = 40%),507 kT in Western Europe (CRAY VALLEY's market share = 30%) and 1565 kT world-wide.

Extraits

[...] The implementation of dry pumps, as it is being tried in Miranda, allows avoiding water emissions ; but such pumps are more expensive to maintain and would be less reliable as liquid ring pumps. Concerning the COD of vacuum pumps effluents, the only available value is ppmO2, which is the highest value measured in Miranda for the pump connected to reactor R Recommendations - Water 8 Even if cooling systems are controlled at the site level and not at the UPR Unit level, the knowledge of cooling water amounts should be improved because it is likely to be one of the parameters required in the Process-BREF” (Best available techniques Reference document), and subsequently in the “Alkyd Resins Process-BREF” (scheduled but not yet started). [...]

[...] The data requested in the survey were the amounts and costs associated with nitrogen usage. B / Noise and odours Noise and odours were part of the data required, since such types of pollution can be significant in some cases. For each of these topics, the following information was requested : number of complaints, operations and substances concerned, possible measurement data and corrective actions implemented. C / Results & Recommendations THANKS TO THE METHODOLOGY IMPLEMENTED, ENVIRONMENTAL DATA FROM THE 4 UPR UNITS WERE COLLECTED, CONSOLIDATED AND COMPARED. [...]

[...] For existing installations, BAT means quite radical environmental improvements and sometimes it will be very costly for companies to adapt their plants to BAT. That is why the Directive grants these installations an eleven year long transition period counting from the day that the Directive entered into force. Best Available Techniques (BAT) BAT are defined as most effective and advanced stage in the development of activities and their methods of operation which indicates the practicable suitability of particular techniques for providing the basis for emission limit values designed to prevent, and where that is not practicable, generally to reduce the emissions and the impact on the environment as a whole”. [...]

[...] Water emission limit values Concerning effluents discharge, the 4 sites are in very different situations (see Table : Table 9 : Comparison of water emission limit values of the plants Table 9 shows that there is a great inequality between the plants in terms of water emission limits. It is striking to see that in a very country like Spain, two similar plants like Sant Celoni and Miranda located in Catalonia and Castile are subjected to completely different environmental rules. [...]

[...] This was done to take into account the differences in mixing activities between the units. In fact, we observed that there was no significant difference between the 2 kinds of values. Hence it is easier and more accurate to only monitor the overall material yield Existing good practices 2 In the Drocourt UPR Unit, material yield is one of the performance indicators reported monthly Recommendations Material Balances 4 Although the comparison of the 4 unit's material yields does not bring very useful conclusions, material yield remains an interesting indicator to monitor in each unit. [...]