HOW INNOVATION DRIVES BREAKTHROUGH SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE

Innovation is not the sole preserve of managers and
engineers. Problem solving on the shop floor can be a
powerful source of ideas and innovation.

OEM’s around the world are responding to the need for equipment and processes that consume less energy, water and materials, and which generate less pollution. Organisations investing in new production capacity would therefore do well to integrate a comprehensive review of available technologies into their procurement processes, since in many instances, the price premium paid for sustainable technologies is more than justifiable by their reduced lifetime operating costs. The reality for most industrial concerns is however that a portfolio of assets at different life cycle stages has to be managed and operated. This equipment has a value on organisational balance sheets, and cannot simply be discarded in favour of more sustainable alternatives. In some cases, this equipment may be over 20 years old, and hail from an era when resource efficiency and pollution prevention were not primary considerations, with this reflected in their design and operation. If your organisation possesses such equipment, a viable question could be: "are you locked into unsustainable operation until it replaced with more modern alternatives?". The answer to that question is a resounding NO! Any equipment or process can be modified to operate more sustainably. In order for you to be able to do so, your organisation needs to focus on innovation as a tool for continuous improvement.

The steps in a typical sustainability programme or initiative are broadly as follows:

STEP	TASKS
ASSESSMENT	Detailed review of operations, consideration of individual elements and their interaction as a system, measurements and calculations to determine resource consumption and emissions to air, land and water, determination of risks
OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION	Determination of potential opportunities to become more sustainable through qualitative benchmarking of current operations e.g. "only standard efficiency motors are used, equipment is left running during breaks, old-style T12 lamps with magnetic ballasts are in use" etc.
OPPORTUNITY DEVELOPMENT	Identification of alternatives, quantification of benefits and costs of implementation, risk assessment for individual solutions
IMPLEMENTATION	Introduction of proposed technologies, work practices, new equipment settings
PERFORMANCE TESTING	Measurement to confirm the actual benefits realised. This should be done immediately after implementation as well as at a pre-determined frequency to ensure the solutions implemented are sustained.

Innovation is most important during OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION and OPPORTUNITY DEVELOPMENT. There are a number of standard approaches to common industrial sustainability challenges. Motor replacement, alternative lighting options, boiler excess air control systems, insulation of hot surfaces, VSD control of under-loaded screw compressors – these are examples of fairly standard approaches. While significant skill is needed to be able to quantify the benefits of implementing such solutions, they cannot be called innovative, and represent the first-order solutions that any industrial organisation seeking to become more sustainable should pursue.

What then would be some examples of the type of innovation I am referring to? This is certainly not only about technology, but also about how systems fit together and can be operated in ways that reduce resource consumption and pollution, as well as increase safety for employees, local communities and consumers. The table below outlines a few simple industrial systems and the more traditional performance improvement options and approaches used to make them more sustainable, if only on an incremental basis. This is contrasted with approaches that are more innovative.

SYSTEM/PROCESS	INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENT APPROACH	SHORTCOMINGS OF INCREMENTAL APPROACH	BREAKTHROUGH IMPROVEMENT APPROACHES YIELDED THROUGH INNOVATION
Clean-in-place (CIP) plant used to clean pipelines in a food plant	Daily measurement of chemical concentrations, management of these to ensure they are not exceeded (which would lead to wastage of chemicals) and weekly dumping of tanks to sewer to ensure gross solids levels are maintained at low enough levels.	While better than a situation where concentrations are too high, weekly dumping means increased water use, additional energy for heating of fresh make-up water and loss of chemicals with each dump. The CIP plant is also unavailable during the dumping process.	Chemical management to remain, but instead of dumping weekly, use of a small centrifuge to remove gross solids. Viability improved dramatically if an existing centrifuge can be used.
Paraffin-fired boiler to produce steam for heating of process vessels. Poorly utilised.	Insulate steam and condensate lines, measure flue gas oxygen and reduce using damper valve, increase condensate recovery.	These options will make the boiler system as efficient as possible. However, they do not address the fact that a boiler may not be the most suitable solution to begin with, given the small heat load involved.	Use an electrical heating system, provided that power and demand charges are less than the life-cycle costs of operating a boiler.
Drying oven using hot air to remove moisture from agricultural products	Monitor oven temperature carefully and control gas consumption accordingly	The solution monitors and controls the existing process without questioning whether its fundamental energy consumption could be reduced. The mass of air is a big driver of the energy requirement necessary to achieve a given temperature. Of course, the relative humidity of the air leaving the drier also has to be considered.	Install a VSD on the fan supplying the air and use this to reduce airflow and increase temperature, install a heat exchanger to preheat incoming air using energy from the wet air leaving the drier.
Packaging line with many conveyors and equipment left running during breaks	Train operators to switch individual machines off during breaks.	The solution relies heavily on operator discipline.	Install a master switch that can be used to simultaneously switch a number of pieces of equipment off during breaks.
Cooling system serving multiple individual users of cooling water using a ring main with continuous flow from which users withdraw water	Install cogged belts for fan drives and use energy efficient motors for fans and pumps.	These actions may reduce energy consumption, but will not eliminate the inefficiency associated with the unnecessary circulation of water	Use VSD’s on the cooling tower fan and pump motors to make the system flexible and responsive to variations in demand. Integrate with feedback from individual processes through a control system.

Innovation in industrial sustainability is typically achieved by harnessing a number of individual disciplines, technologies and work practices in concert. It is most easily inculcated in organisations by involving a broad spectrum of employees and service providers, empowering them to be creative and focusing their efforts around clear improvement objectives. While OEM’s can help, an important input to innovation in the industrial environment is an intimate knowledge of the processes being modified. This knowledge is generally only held by those who “own” the process, and who understand all of the variables that have to be optimised in order for the objectives of the process to be met. Using this knowledge prevents a situation where energy consumption is reduced, but product quality or safety is compromised, for example. That said, these process owners may not necessarily understand the dynamics of individual unit operations employed in the process, and their systems knowledge should therefore be augmented with specialist technical knowledge such as that held by OEM’s or other technical specialists. Innovation can unlock sustainability opportunities that go beyond “best practice”, and no sustainability strategy is complete if it does not address this important issue.

Copyright © 2013, Craig van Wyk, all rights reserved

RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES ASSOCIATED WITH INDUSTRIAL WATER POLLUTION

Clean, abundant water is an important driver of economic
growth, social stability and ecosystem health. 

Water pollution is an important sustainability risk due to its impact on human health and the environment. Importantly, water pollution also reduces available water resources, at times rendering them unusable for their intended purpose. Water scarcity can have serious impacts, and the prevention of water pollution should therefore be a salient aspect of any national water security strategy, to be viewed within an integrated framework that includes infrastructure development (dams, purification plants, transfer pipelines etc.) and water conservation.  

From the policy and regulatory perspective, the water pollution issue is complex and requires a multidisciplinary approach for its appropriate management. Diffuse pollution, such as that caused by runoff from industrial sites, is particularly difficult to measure, control and regulate. The many different modes of transport of pollutants also makes this issue one which can fall within the ambit of different regulatory bodies, increasing the challenges associated with its management.  For example, problems around air quality and solid waste management can ultimately result in water pollution problems. In South Africa, the integration of   national departments to yield a single Department of Water and Environmental Affairs can be considered to be an important first step in removing some of the structural impediments to the systems approach that is so essential in dealing with matters of water pollution at the policy level. This theme of integration carries through to the micro level, and polluters themselves also require cross-functional approaches if they are to get to grips with the water pollution issue holistically.

Industry is but one of a number of economic sectors which contribute to surface and groundwater pollution. The impact of individual industrial sub-sectors varies markedly, and it would be folly to tar all industries with the same brush in terms of their water pollution profiles. Some industries have well-documented pollution footprints, and are known to be riskier than others (for example the metals industry, where some players could pollute the environment with heavy metals or even hexavalent chromium discharges, or the pulp and paper industry, which is know for its potential in terms of persistent organic pollutants (POP’s), to name just two). However, seemingly innocuous discharges take on a new significance when pollution life-cycles are considered. For example, nutrient discharges from food processing could lead to algal blooms, some of which could lead to the presence of carcinogenic cyanotoxins that could ultimately find their way into drinking water. High organic loads could also generate carcinogenic trihalomethanes during water purification. It is therefore vital for polluters to take a systems view of pollution, and to consider the downstream impacts of their activities in terms of how pollutants interact with the environment. These are the types of risks that are generally not reflected in instruments such as the effluent discharge specifications industries are typically expected to comply with.  Compliance therefore does not equate to sustainability, particularly in poorly regulated or developing environments.

The implication for industrial players who truly wish to become sustainable is that they need to take a high level of organisational responsibility in dealing with water pollution. Holistic and ongoing assessment of water pollution risks is essential.  This assessment should comprise a review of known industry-specific water pollution risks, detailed analysis of the various pollution pathways through which contaminants reach receiving surface and groundwater, a life-cycle assessment that considers the environmental, social and economic impacts of individual pollutants, and the status of potentially affected catchments. The only way to carry out this assessment effectively is to examine operations at the process level, identifying and characterising each individual pollution source. The mode of transport of the pollutants must be considered i.e. are they emitted to the environment through a point discharge, through diffuse runoff, via air pollution which finds its way into surface water resources, through solid waste from which pollutants are leached into groundwater etc. Every industrial site and each step in the value chain has unique pollution pathways with impacts determined by the nature of the pollution and the status of the receiving environment in terms of its assimilative capacity.

Site-specific impacts are where control can be exercised most directly, and the most effective mitigation strategy is to attack problems at source, using a philosophy such as Cleaner Production, for example. From a product life-cycle perspective, water pollution impacts can be mitigated by using alternative raw materials, the careful consideration of product characteristics and packaging and product disposal/recycling. This can become quite challenging, since the effluents produced by many recycling processes can be hazardous, and while recycling is generally considered to be positive from a resource efficiency perspective, with easily measured financial benefits, the water pollution impacts can be quite a different matter. In much the same way as effluents should not be forgotten once they have been disposed of to drain, responsibilities regarding water pollution do not end once products have been sold.

I’ve tried to show in this post that this is a complex issue that has to receive focus in any sustainability strategy. It is an issue that is difficult to police, and it is therefore incumbent upon polluters to take responsibility for their impacts rather than to have a compliance mindset that leaves water resource protection solely in the hands of regulators. Lastly, if you view the ongoing management of water pollution only as a cost, think again. Resource efficiency at source is one of the most effective preventive strategies, and translates into direct material usage savings as well as reduced costs of operation for water treatment plants where end-of-pipe approaches are unavoidable. In some circumstances it is possible to generate revenues from the recovery of materials that would otherwise become a source of pollution, and there are also a growing number of clean waste-to-energy solutions making their way onto the market. As with all sustainability issues, water pollution should not be viewed in isolation, as this just leads to missed opportunities.

Copyright © 2013, Craig van Wyk, all rights reserved

AVOID A SILO MENTALITY WITH SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES

Industrial sites are complex systems and should be analysed
as such. Look for linkages within and across the various
dimensions of sustainability and operational excellence.

"Connectedness" is a fundamental principle of sustainability. At the plant level, this theme is enhanced by the very real linkages between water, energy, materials, safety, product quality, plant reliability, pollution and other elements which can broadly be grouped as operational excellence issues. Understanding these linkages and rendering them explicit is vitally important, since ignoring them can lead to a false economy in which individual sustainability initiatives will be viewed as saving money, but in which the collective basket of projects saves less than the sum of its parts, or worse, actually runs at a loss. Alternatively, an initiative might lead to cost savings but may have negative long-term occupational health impacts, or may simply fix one environmental problem, but cause another. If you are in the business of piecemeal sustainability projects which do not take a systems view, beware of falling into this trap.

Let me give you a few simple examples to illustrate the point:

• A scrubber system is installed to deal with an air quality problem, but generates a hazardous effluent which results in water pollution problems
• The solvent-to-paint ratio is increased in a paint shop to reduce paint consumption, but exposes workers to higher levels of volatile organic compounds
• Cheaper raw materials are purchased in a “coup” for the procurement department, but the materials result in lower process yields, increased effluent charges and higher manufacturing costs overall
• Variable speed drives are fitted to cooling tower fans to reduce motor speeds and hence power consumption at a power generation plant, but the increase in cooling water temperature supplied to the condensers decreases turbine efficiency and increases the amount of fuel required for a given electricity output
• Contaminated condensate is recovered in a bid to increase energy efficiency and reduce water consumption, but this leads to increased boiler blowdown and increased cleaning frequencies, with accompanying  downtime

How then do we get around problems of this nature? One of the most important tasks when developing sustainability projects is to conduct a holistic and detailed risk assessment. This assessment must examine the specifics of the intervention in terms of its local benefits, but must also interrogate every touch point at which it interfaces with upstream and downstream processes and the wider environment. Only once you have satisfied yourself that there is a benefit to the system overall should you proceed.