When your day-to-day responsibilities are driven by deadlines and powered by efficiency, it can seem unthinkable to even consider the voluntary shut down of production — for any length of time. But when Brandenburg’s distillation columns responsible for running Propylene Glycol USP were revealing some potential issues, that’s exactly what the team had to do. And while it wasn’t easy, it did prove that even the biggest challenges can be overcome when our teams come together.

“Over time, we began noticing operational issues that were forcing the columns to operate outside normal temperature ranges to achieve the specifications,” Wendell Borges, Brandenburg Site Leader, explained. “And on a number of occasions, we were also having to stop production temporarily to clean and conduct repairs, which would cause delivery delays and material losses, while impacting our standards of safety in which we pride ourselves on. We knew it was time to take real action — no matter how significant of an undertaking it would be.”

So the team recruited an engineering company to conduct a set of high-tech, extensive inspections. And while they knew they had a long road ahead of them, they didn’t realize just how extensive the work would be.

“It was pretty eye-opening for us,” Gary Sipes, Production Supervisor at Monument Chemical, shared. “We discovered that most of the trays inside the columns were damaged or out of place, which really impacted the columns’ separation ability. And there were parts of the packing bed that were missing, or at the very end of their lifespan. We expected some deficiencies, just not to this degree. Performing this level of inspection allowed us to gain the kind of perspective to create a more efficient path forward to address them.”

With the newfound awareness that action required to get production back in high gear, the team came together across sectors, working with the company to develop extensive planning to reduce the outage required for updates and minimize all safety, quality, and output risks.

“These weren’t the type of repairs you can just have someone come in and do in a day or so,” Eathan Peach, Production Superintendent at Monument Chemical, added. “We scoped out the whole project, prioritizing the more pressing issues that could impact process safety and product quality. We had all the resources we needed dedicated to our planned shut down date, which involved a lot of risk. We went into the turnaround with 20-30% less inventory than we anticipated, so it really drove a high level of focus and motivation to get things back on track on time and on budget. Once these columns were torn apart, we weren’t getting anything done until we got the job done.”

Brandenburg had multiple teams working around the clock and on weekends, performing complex activities in many confined spaces within the distillation columns.  About 100 contractors worked on site for three weeks — operating 24/7 with the support of our EDC, reliability, and safety teams.

And in just a couple of days of starting the columns back up, that success translated to producing food-grade material at the best quality standard ever produced in the plant. In addition, as a result of the separations occurring smoothly with the trays in place, the plant is now consuming much less steam in the distillation process, which contributes significantly to our continued sustainability efforts.

“This was an undertaking unlike any I have seen in my 16 years at Monument,” Gary added. “Our teams did an incredible job from start to finish, getting new columns in place and the repaired ones back up and running without issues, despite the level of challenge involved. We finalized the project with zero accidents and were both on time and below budget. We’re now seeing the columns working better than they ever have and doing what they were truly designed to do. And we owe this type of success to the level of dedication and preparation from each team throughout the entire process.”