Ingeo News: March 2023
Capacity Enhancing Technologies at the NatureWorks Plant in Blair, NE
To get the details on how the plant has evolved since the capacity enhancement, Senior Digital Strategist, Virginia Thompson, sat down with the Blair, NE NatureWorks Plant Leader, Craig Bossert, for an interview and some insights.
Virginia Thompson: Hi Craig, thanks for meeting with me today. Now that the capacity upgrades are complete in the Blair manufacturing plant, would you first explain how those enhancements have affected our production?
Craig Bossert: I’m happy to talk about it! So, the scope of the upgrades encompassed three independent phases:
The first phase was designed to increase separation in the middle of our distillation system. This improvement, and all the new appurtenances, allowed us to optimize the chemistry of the lactide stream at increased capacity which in turn enabled us to increase polymer production by 10 percent.
The second phase involved upgrading our ability to push Ingeo polymer through various unit operations in the plant. The previous installations were sized in a fashion wherein the mechanical design would create physical limitations as we pushed to higher rates, limiting our achievable capacity. The improvements allowed for increased capacity of our high-performance grades.
The third phase of the project was debottlenecking the back end of our plant (after the product is pelletized). A bottleneck analysis was completed and indicated the need for additional capacity within multiple unit operations if we were to maximize our production capabilities. Additional assets were sized, designed, and installed to alleviate any concerns related to our ability to move pelletized Ingeo PLA.
VT: How have you seen the improvement projects come together?
CB: Major construction efforts began in March of 2021 and continued into October of that year. Some assets were brought online in July, others carried to the end of that timeframe, others yet were modified to provide maximum benefit and were only finalized in the middle of 2022.
Following construction, commissioning and startup efforts took several months. We conducted extensive run time, performance analysis, and multiple months of “tuning” various parameters throughout the process to realize the full value of the improvements.
The results of these enhancements have enabled us to serve our customers better and provide new volumes to growing markets.
VT: What are the three most important aspects of the Blair plant that you think NatureWorks customers and partners don’t know?
CB: My “top 3” aspects of the Blair facility all center on the people and the team.
1. We have world class safety results as a function of world class safety programs that are delivered year after year through normal operations, scheduled maintenance initiatives, and even major construction projects.
2. The ownership of the process, the assets, the products, and the performance of the plant reflect the quality of the people who show up to work every day.
3.The desire to innovate, improve, and execute each day is supported and fostered at all levels of the manufacturing organization, and across all functions.
Interested in using Ingeo biopolymer for your application? Contact us!
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INDEX
NatureWorks Industry Leader, Salvador Ortega, will present “Ingeo PLA Advances and Breakthroughs in Hygiene Applications” at this event.