Industry given greenlight

Who could have predicted that the rise of environmental awareness would bring a whole new industry into being and create new markets for what was once considered waste? Who also would have predicted that contractors could ever collaborate rather than confront over a project's management? A few companies did, like CEL International (formerly Courtaulds).

CEL's environmental fixing company Cortex was formed in 1991 to `bring emergent environmental technologies across to process industries and encourage cross technologies,' says Ed Wilson, operations director at CEL.

End of the `end of pipe'

As Wilson explains, there are a number of drivers for environmental projects, particularly the recent spate of mergers, acquisitions and consolidation leading to old sites being sold off. Furthermore, requirements to bring existing plants up to new standards, corporate commitments to ISO 14001, tightening IPPC and COMAH legislation, and new industry guidelines such as `Don't forget the Environment by the IChemE' affect industry interest in green solutions.

To date, Wilson observes, investments have been `end-of-pipe solutions' which have reflected in the project management carried out by CEL in the last few years, particularly stack systems. Other green industrial add-ons, such as CHP plants, have been encouraged by Government legislation, tempting industry into long-term cost savings through investment.

However, going forward, the chemicals industry has embraced the principle of environmental impact reduction in the design to render the `end-of-pipe' solution unnecessary or at least minimised. About 60 per cent of CEL's environmental projects are `end-of-pipe' but are also the smallest projects (sub £2m), whereas the 40 per cent of new integrated design solutions are worth in excess of £6m.

`Having accepted this principle there is now a concerted drive to take the concept further and processing companies are looking to purify the waste streams to achieve an additional value-added product,' adds Wilson.

One such project, due for completion in November, is the Elementis Chromium Salt project at Eaglescliffe on Teesside. The plant has been manufacturing chromium chemicals for over 70 years. One feature of the present process is the production of sodium sulphate as by-product. New markets were discovered for purified sodium sulphate product but the existing purification and treatment plant could not deal with the required doubling of capacity.

What is waste?

Tony Maplesden, engineering manager at Elementis Chromium explains: `What this project actually does is give us the opportunity to purify the salt and get it in a much cleaner form so it is targeted in a different market.

`This project has a significant measure of environmental benefit associated with it as well. Because the untreated sodium sulphate had a certain amount of chromium material locked into the salt structure, it's difficult to handle with some potential hazards with people who may come into contact with it.'

If markets can be found for a purer waste the conceptual question begs: what is waste? This is the question that companies like Cortex are looking at - the ideal being zero waste requiring bespoke solutions to chemically alter a by-product.

Activated processes

Environmental issues are not the only influence on process contracting. Studies such as the Latham Report, `Constructing the Team', the Sir John Egan report 98/99, and the CRINE initiative to improve industry performance offshore, all revealed the degree of damage caused by adversarial contractual relationships.

Wilson believes that through initiatives such as the government sponsored ACTIVE, a vertically integrated approach to projects, with partnering agreements reached both up and downstream, is gaining acceptance.

Stephen Weatherley, project director for the ACTIVE initiative explains further: `The ACTIVE projects have committed to principles based on a much more collaborative way of working with the supply chain. We are benchmarking their performance against the industry.'

The Elementis project appointed the main subcontractors about six months before they started work. `This helped in the definition and shaping of the project. We involved CEL from a very early stage by agreeing exactly what the important goals for the project were, using an integrated team of Elementis personnel and CEL personnel so there was no overlap or "man-marking."

`We are measuring direct time and cost benefits and also looking at short circuiting the lengthy pre-qualification process which adds a lot of time onto a project.'

`We are getting to the point in the initiative now where we are starting to see results. Over the next six to nine months we are going to see a number of projects well down the track where we can see the benefits in hard fact rather than a belief that it will deliver.'

The project is due for completion in November on target and on budget. PE