Initiative Offsets Freshwater Purchases and Waste Treatment Costs

The Geismar plant had a need to reduce costs for interplant truck transfers, and had rainwater that was captured on site, but could not be used. By thinking outside of the box, and recognizing that the one pipeline could help both challenges a team of associates found a creative way to use 4.8 MM gallons of rainwater, offsetting freshwater purchases and waste treatment costs. That is ten times more annually than in prior years!

A project team of operations and Six Sigma associates set out to identify and implement solutions to reduce truck transfers of product between two physical locations separated by nearly ½ mile. These transfers were required to meet customer demands at the two separate locations.

Through their investigation, the project team identified that a pipeline would not only eliminate trucked interplant transfers, but could also be used to transfer rainwater captured in the tank farm area between the two locations for beneficial reuse in the process and the necessary flushing of the piping after each transfer.

As a result of this pipeline not only was the site able to increase their rainwater consumption, but were able to eliminate 1,812 truck shipments annually between the two locations and the resulting fuel use, CO2 emissions and potential safety and environmental exposures.