It’s amazing what a little extra time can amount to — but only when you take advantage of it. When it came to waste management at the Houston and Bayport sites, that’s exactly the mindset they chose to take; they capitalized on some downtime and additional distillation capacity to uncover some incredible cost-saving solutions worthy of big praise — especially for the specific team members leading the way.

“One of my first initiatives when moving into Business Excellence was to bring Houston/Bayport’s waste management services in-house,” Kris Sturgul explained. “At the time, we were relying on a third party company called Slick Resources to do everything, and within three months, we brought 90% of these capabilities internally. This not only provided tremendous cost-savings across the sites, but also gave us the opportunity to learn how to better manage our waste and control our own destiny. We’re no longer relying on someone else to make these decisions for us.”

And both Bayport and Houston didn’t view the opportunity lightly, taking advantage of an opportunity to reevaluate their waste management processes to make some big, super-saver discoveries.

Bayport: TBM-90

The combination of column availability and creative thinking resulted in significant cost savings at Bayport. As a bi-product from our FlexorsorbSE process, TBM organics are also a key component in TBM-90, a product the site produces and sells. With one specific distillation process at Bayport consisting of half TBM and half water, the team is typically able to facilitate the separation of that water from the mixture before disposal with a certain temperature — but not all of it. As a result, shipping to the wastewater facilities came at a very high cost.

“We had been sitting on eight railcars of this FlexorbSE bi-product for a couple of years because of the distillation time needed to run this material,” Alex Willig, Bayport Production Engineer, explained. “Given we had some available column capacity now, Romain Vidal-Michel, Operations Manager, presented the idea of feeding this water layer through distillation to recover the organics, so only clean water was being sent for disposal. We did a water clean up run and TBM-90 product run, which brought us down from eight rail cars to three. And every time we do these campaigns going forward, we will have fewer leftovers, which not only results in significant cost savings due to volume and quality of the shipment, but also allows us to generate additional profits by using the leftover organics to create more TBM-90 to sell.”

And even in such a short time span, the savings have been monumental:

• $53,306 for the wastewater to GC (68,782 lb reduction in TOC’s)

• $20,672 for not having to send out 113,000 lb of TBM Heavies waste

• Additional 57,000 lbs of TBM90 recovered from WW * 95% yield = 54,150 lbs * $0.52/lb selling price = $28,158

Total Savings = $102,136

Even further, the Bayport team applied a similar optimization mindset to its AMPAC THF process, which resulted in additional savings of $27,000.

“We’ve always been extremely proactive in improving our processes and reducing our wastes, but with a little extra time to devote to it, we were able to ask what else we can do?”  Romain shared. “These outcomes are a result of thoughtful, open collaboration across the teams. From operating the columns to coordinating shipments and moving rail cars in and out, it was a complicated process that required a lot of communication from everyone involved.”

Houston: Wastewater

After an analysis by the Houston team, they were determined to figure out the best way to remove any excess water from its waste water stream before sending it out for disposal. And the team saw an opportunity to apply a familiar process to a new challenge.

With some additional column capacity available, the team put their wastewater through a double distillation process. After the usual distillation run, they ran the material through for a second time, separating the organics even further, allowing them to ship the waste water out for essentially nothing. As a result, the team not only saved significantly on disposing of far less volume, but also selling the leftover organics as a product.

The reduction of shipments and canceled truckloads amounted to over $42,000 in savings from one campaign.

A Continued Dedication to Waste Reduction 

“All of these projects are certainly a tribute to thinking outside of the box,” Kris added. “It was taking processes we already knew and having those conversations as to how we can use that knowledge and experience to improve what we’re already doing. We’re gaining a better understanding of how we can learn from other processes to areas we may not have considered. As employees move across sites, they are able to bring a fresh perspective to the processes and help each site see things differently based on their unique backgrounds. It’s allowed us to rethink some of the old ways of doing things and to understand how we can do them better.”
Between the three initiatives and little improvements along the way, the teams have been able to save almost $300,000 in total across both sites in just a few months.

“What’s next for us is figuring out how we can make some of these practices on-going regardless of our distillation capacity and bandwidth,” Kris continued. “We’ll be taking our learnings and conducting a cost analysis to understand in what areas we can improve and how it will affect our outcome overall. Now that we know what we’re capable of, it’s an exciting position to be in!”