Jul 20 2008
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has recognized Dow Corning with a Responsible Care Energy Efficiency Award for reducing CO2 emissions about the equivalent of 600 cars, and saving enough energy to heat 500 homes. This is the fifth Energy Efficiency Award Dow Corning has received in the last four years.
Dow Corning’s Carrollton, Kentucky site was selected for “Good control improves distillation efficiency” in the category of Significant Improvement in Manufacturing - Operating Unit. The energy used for distillation is typically one of the largest components of a site’s total energy usage. Many distillation columns operate the same way year after year, and not running at optimum conditions compounds energy losses. The Carrollton site implemented a Six Sigma project to bring a column up to peak efficiency, and then replicate the results on a similar process.
"This is another great example of using Six Sigma to drive sustainability, reducing both our CO2 footprint and our energy costs," said Peter Cartwright (PDF Size = 40.5 KB), Dow Corning executive director for environment, health and safety. “Our employees deserve this recognition for their hard work and dedication as they continually look for solutions to improve our processes and technology.”
Annualized energy savings from this project are over 25% of the columns steam usage, around 60,000 MMBtu, with associated CO2 emissions reductions of almost 3,500 tons. To put this in perspective, the CO2 reduction is the same as getting over 600 cars off the road and the energy saved could heat nearly 500 Kentucky homes all year!