E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc.

Year Submitted: 2003

Process: Stack Gas Cleaning

Industry: Agricultural Chemical Manufacturing

Wastes Reduced: Stack Emissions

Substance: HCl and PCl3

Location: Orange, Orange County TX

No. of employees: 500

Description:

Developed means to reprocess and/or sell out-of-specification polymer product which had previously been landfilled.

P2 Application:

Du Pont's Ethylene Copolymer operation in Texas produces over 500 different products in primarily the Surlyn, Nucrel, Elvax, Bynel, Elvaloy and DPE product lines. This is accomplished with 4 large scale continuous flow Autoclaves, and 4 down-stream continuous compounding extruders. Continuous flow operations require that different product be made by "transitioning" from previous products. This mode of operation, along with new product development tests, and process upsets results in a fraction of the plants output not meeting du Pont's quality standards. This material would normally be disposed of at a local landfill. In 1987 Area Management adopted the thrust of eliminating this landfill stream. By utilizing our technology around blending, drying and compounding as well as working closely with the marketing organization, it was able to completely convert this landfill stream into sales revenue. du Pont's goal of "No more pellets to the landfill" has been realized.

Environmental Benefits:

Since initiating this thrust du Pont has reduced its landfill load in excess of 100 million pounds. In addition, the learnings from this effort have been applied to other landfilled material including cardboard, raw material drums, pallets and even office paper and aluminum cans. It has developed ways to collect and recycle these materials for a cost savings to the business. (With the exception of the Aluminum cans. They are donated to local charities).

Details of Reductions

Additional Information :

Financial benefits of this effort has topped $10 million in terms of revenue generated and landfill cost savings. In addition du Pont has contributed over 1000 lbs. of aluminum (since mid year) to an Orange County charity. The cost of implementing this effort was essentially no capital and only minimal additional operating costs.

Source: TCEQ