Newswise — With the support of a pollution prevention grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a Rowan University (Glassboro, New Jersey) chemical engineering team has been working with DuPont scientists on improving the sustainability of chemical manufacture.
Led by Drs. Mariano J. Savelski and C. Stewart Slater, the team has been investigating the sustainability of various approaches to reduce process waste generated from the production of specialty resins at DuPont’s Parlin, New Jersey plant. These resin precursor chemicals are used in manufacturing many popular consumer electronic devices. The Rowan student team consists of graduate student Brigitte Pastore; seniors Rakel Dziobek, Scott Pedersen, Colin Pierce, Christian Wisniewski and Nick Zalewski; and juniors Rick Bartell, John Morton and Paul Tozzi. The scientists at DuPont working with the Rowan team are Frank Richetti, process chemist, and Nancy Uff, Safety, Health, and Environment Manager.
Now in the second year of the project, the Rowan team has been evaluating approaches to recover waste products at the production facility. Often discarded or sent to outside firms, these wastes represent opportunities in recovered water and chemicals for potential reuse, thus reducing the cost and carbon footprint of the manufacturing operation. Papers describing the project were presented at the 19th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference in Maryland this past July and at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City in November. Members of the Rowan team recently were invited to speak at the U. S. EPA in New York as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the federal Pollution Prevention Act.
To date, the Rowan project has provided strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of resin manufacturing by 40 percent, saving approximately one million pounds per year of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Approaches have explored distillation and alternative separation methods to purify the solvent N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone from waste; other aspects of the work investigate membrane techniques such as reverse osmosis for water reuse. These efforts have leveraged Rowan’s unique capabilities in separation process design and environmental life cycle modeling.
According to Richetti, “Some of the ideas for solvent recovery and substitution might be a benefit to DuPont in future years as we look towards new products and processes.” DuPont has long been a leader in developing chemicals that help the world, and making them in an environmentally responsible way. Uff added, “The idea is to consider all approaches to improve the sustainable profile of manufacturing, now and in the future.” Michael Hatton, an area manager at the Parlin facility and alumnus of Rowan’s Chemical Engineering Department (B.S. ChE ’04, M.S. ChE ’05), states, “We see Rowan as a good partner institution, whose engineering clinic program is a model for helping industry with its many challenges.” In addition to the Parlin plant’s involvement in this project, DuPont facilities in Ohio and Virginia, which have similar interests in improving their sustainability profile, have expressed their interest in the project. The Division’s Group Manager, Charles Richwine, said, “We believe in strong ties with universities in our region. Having students engaged in a project like this helps them understand the business aspects of a corporation and better prepares them to enter the workforce.”
Savelski, Rowan’s Chemical Engineering Department Head and co-principal investigator for the project, said, “Our Chemical Engineering Department has a focus in sustainability in both conducting research with various industries and in educating the future workforce.” Savelski and Slater’s previous EPA-sponsored project successes came from working with New Jersey pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Novartis. Said Slater, “We hope this project with DuPont is the start of other future endeavors that help the chemical manufacturing sector, so crucial to the regional economy.”
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