EnsartechEuropean Project Semester2011/2012

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PrefaceFirst we would like to start with a short introduction of the teammembers. We work together

as an EPS, which stands for European Project Semester, group. This ‘semester‘ is a course

where you do a project together with student from different universities from all over Europe.

Our group, Team Ensartech, was made up out of four students:

Frédéric Kouessi is a 24 year old student from Paris. Back at home he studies Eco-

innovation and Renewable Energy at the ESIEE University located in Paris, France.

Max Mesenholl is a 22 year old student from Berlin. At his universiy of applied sci-

ences in Berlin, Germany, he studies Mechanical Engineering with a specification in

Renewable Energies.

Rebeca Martínez Revuelta is a 24 year old student who lives in Cantabria, Spain.

She studies Technical Industrial Engineering and specializes in Industrial Chemistry at

the University of Cantabria.

Joey van der Veeken is a 20 year old student from Waalwijk, the Netherlands. He

studies Communication and Multimedia Design at the Avans University of Applied Sci-

ences in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands.

As a group of the European Project Semester, we worked for a company known as En-

sartech, located in Sint Oedenrode, the Netherlands. This company specilizes in contribut-

ing to a more healthy and cleaner environment by processing waste without leftovers.

What did this project mean for us? It gave us an opportunity to work together with students

from different European countries, each with different personalities and with a different cul-

tural backgrounds. Other than this, this gave us a chance to improve our knowledge of the

English language, speaking this on a business-level. We also learned how to work on an

international base, learning to cope with the differences in cultures and habits.

Finally, we would like to thank Dimitri van de Kelft, our tutor from the university; Robert

Kreeft, our company coach from Ensartech; Ser van de Ven and Jan Lotens, Chief Chemi-

cal Officer and Chief Technological Officer of Ensartech; and Martin Ooms, the CEO of

Ensartech.

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Abstract“Ensartech’s mission is to contribute to a cleaner environment for the world’s current and future inhabitants and, by means of processing highly polluted waste streams at

high temperatues, to provide these inhabitants with energy.”ensartech.eu / about us

Ensartech stands for ENergy Smelting And Recycling TECHnology. Their goal? Deploy their

new technology to process hazardous waste, with the exception of radioactive material and

the majority of pharmaceutical waste, in a way so that there are no leftovers after the pro-

cessing. Other than processing the various wastestreams, the facility also creates steam,

which can be used to power other plants for instance, and slag, which can be used in vari-

ous construction processes.

Ensartech has recently started with the construction of Ensartech-NL1, their first plant which

will show the excellent and benificial results which can be achieved with the use of the En-

sartech technology, in Delfzijl, in the northern part of the Netherlands. The Ensartech-NL1

plant will be capable of processing 25.000 tons of hazardous waste a year once the con-

struction is complete.

Their aim is to propose and eventually construct the same type of plants in western Europe,

namely Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. Ensartech plans to build 10 to 15

plants within the next five years, either as stand-alone plants, such as Ensartech-NL1, or as

on-site plants, implementing the technology within the facility of a company.

To achieve the goals mentioned above, the company asked us to find out which companies

would be the best to approach by creating a ‘dossier‘, containing the most valuable informa-

tion about said companies. The information leads to a recommendation for Ensartech to

help them with propositions.

This report gives an overview of the top players within the chemical field. It contains

recommendations on potential locations for where Ensartech can propose to build their

plants, either as stand-alone or on-site. It contains recommendations on what we think

about the Ensartech technology, whether a different strategy or design might be better.

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IndexGoals

Recommendation

Ranking

Based on wastestreams

Based on location

Project management

Overview

Ensartech technology

Governments

Global top 50 (2010)

Dow Jones Sustainability Index

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FiguresGoverments; Priorities in treating waste

Global top 50 chemical companies of 2010

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GoalsThe goals of this project.

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GoalsEnsartech’s goal is to propose and eventually construct the same type of plants in western

Europe, namely Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. Ensartech plans to build 10

to 15 plants within the next five years, either as stand-alone plants, such as Ensartech-NL1, or

as on-site plants, implementing the technology within the facility of a company.

To achieve the goals mentioned above, the company asked us to find out which companies

would be the best to approach by creating a ‘dossier‘, containing the most valuable information

about said companies. The information leads to a recommendation for Ensartech to help them

with propositions.

This report gives an overview of the top players within the chemical field.

It contains recommendations on potential locations for where Ensartech can propose to

build their plants, either as stand-alone or on-site.

It contains recommendations on what we think about the Ensartech technology, whether a

different strategy or design might be better.

The concrete requirements can be found in the appendix “Project Management”.

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AdviceRecommendations forthe Ensartech plants.

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AdviceFor the promotion of the Ensartech technology and the marketing strategy, the best option in

our opinion, would be to build a few larger plants for example in Mittel-Deutschland or at the

Border Triangle. This because there is nearly no competition in these two regions, and for the

marketing aspect of the Ensartech promotion it is better to work together with several compa-

nies. Then Ensartech can show that their technology is of high quality and works good before

moving to on-site plants within big industries. Using this kind of strategy, companies might be

interested in having a plant within their facilities. These facilities might be in areas with big

competitors such as in Nordrhein-Westfalen or Antwerp, which have a high amount of hazard-

ous waste per year to run a Ensartech plant by themselves.

If you do consider going for on-site plants, a smelter with a smaller capacity might prove to be

usefull. The majority of the facilities don’t reach the 25.000 ton per annum capacity of the cur-

rent Ensartech plant at all, so if you would want to implement this technology within industries,

then it will be more beneficial to, perhaps, design a smaller smelter.

The benefits of a small plant on-site would be that you could ‘sell‘ the energy that gets re-

trieved from the processing of hazardous waste. Other than this, there would be zero-to-none

transportation costs if the plants were to be on-site.

On an economical scale, it would be better to use a larger smelter, compared to a small one,

because then the price is lower. A large smelter is more beneficial because the average price

per ton of capacity is lower than that of a smaller smelter. This however could be equalized

because the small plants would be on-site, removing the costs of transporting the amounts of

hazardous waste.

Other than focusing on the chemical market, it could be more interesting to look at the other

markets which produce a lot of hazardous waste per year, such as the metallurgy. For example

in France, the metallurgy is the largest producer of waste by far.

In the end it all depends on the wastestreams, the exact amount of hazardous waste and the

way of transporting the hazardous waste at the moment. This would require a lot of in-depth

information which is not publicly available. Therefore you would have to speak with the waste-

managers of the interesting companies.

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RankingBased on both the waste-streams and locations.

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Ranking based on wastestreamsThis ranking is based and compared on the knowledge of the produced hazardous

waste and the sustainability goals each company follows. Concrete Numbers and

explanations can be found in the single dossiers of each firm in the appendix.

BASF is an interesting company because of the Verbund sites and the interest-

ing waste-streams; inorganics, coatings, et cetera. They do however have their on

incineration plant in Ludwigshafen.

Bayer’s CropScience and HealthCare are interesting divisions of Bayer, agricul-

tural and pharmaceutical products. They do transport their waste from Berlin to, for

example, Leverkusen, where they, however, have their own incineration plants.

DSM has interesting chemicals and currently landfills and -farms ~7000 and

~52.000 tons of waste, and, recover ~25.000 tons of hazardous waste in Geleen.

DSM focuses on life sciences and materials sciences.

Lanxess has a larger amount of hazardous waste compared to non-hazardous

waste and the stakeholders have shown interest in environmental protection. Inter-

esting fields are performance chemicals and advanced intermediates.

PPG Industries focuses on just paints and coatings (74%) in western Europe,

which have big and interesting wastestreams. Have a location close in Delfzijl,

close to the first plant; EnsartechNL-1.

Evonik is interesting since only 100.000 out of 174.000 tons of waste was treated

in 2010. Makes use of advanced intermediates and inorganics so they do have an

interesting wastestream.

DOW Chemical wants to reduce the ‘Highly Hazardous Material Tonne-Miles‘ by

50%, to 705 million tons, about 23% (150.000 tons) is transported to treatment

facilities. On-site plants would be an interesting proposition.

Du Pont is not recommended, majority of production is in North- and South-Amer-

ica.

Excluded are Akzo Nobel, Teijin and Solvay as Ensartech’s already been in contact with them.

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Ranking based on locationAfter consideration of the maps, the economical aspects and the amount of hazard-

ous waste this ranking was set up. More information can be found in the appendix.

Nordrhein-Westfalen has large amount of facilities in this area, more-or-less every

company we’ve researched has one or more plants in this region of Germany.

However, there is quite some competition in this area; Bayer has incineration plants

in the region with a capacity of ~200.000 tons / annum.

Antwerp has various companies next to eachother, such as Evonik, Solvay and

BASF’s Verbund site. Here however there’s also some direct competition; Indaver,

the region’s incineration plant.

Frankfurt am Main; biggest production site of BASF (Verbund Ludwigshafen) is

in this area, along with various other companies (see the map; Evonik, AkzoNo-

bel, DOW). BASF keeps their own incineration plant in this area with a capacity of

165.000 tons / annum.

Rotterdam; large factory of AkzoNobel located here along with plants of DSM and

Lanxess, the area of Botlek.

Limburg has a concentration of plants (mainly DSM) in this area, where they also

recover 25.000 tons of hazardous waste (Geleen). Close to Nordrhein-Westfalen,

too.

Border Triangle; the 3 country point of France, Germany and Swiss where there’re

barely any incineration plants but several industries, such as DSM (~6 plants),

Bayer and Evonik.

Delfzijl; last in the ranking since EnsartechNL-1 is already being build there.

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ManagementThe how-and-when of the project.

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Project managementThis paragraph will show the chapters of the project management. These will all be linked and

can be found in the appendices of the ‘Project Management‘.

These chapters contain the process of this project; how we got to the results in the end. It also

shows the roles the various members of the team fulfilled. Last but not least there is a list of

requirements we built up together with our company coach, Robert Kreeft.

PhasesInitiation phase

Definition phase

Design phase

Development phase

Follow-up phase

Working on a multi-disciplinary problemAnalyse a complex multi-disciplinary problem

Create innovative multidisciplinairy solutions to problems

Evaluate solutions from the multidisciplinairy perspective

Integrate knowledge from various disciplines

The group is informed about applicable knowledge and skills within the team

The group is receptive to incorporate knowledge from various disciplines

The group can demonstrate the use of knowledge from various disciplines

Risk analysis

RequirementsMust have

Should have

Could have

Nice to have

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OverviewOverview of the interestingtopics which were used.

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Ensartech technologyEnsartech is introducing right now a technology which processes highly hazardous material

without leaving any leftovers. The idea which distinguishes the way of treating the waste is pri-

marily the temperature. Established present process burn the waste with ~1200°C, Ensartech

does with 1450°C.

Ensartech handles each sort of waste except radioactive and hospital residues. Even the ag-

gregate phase does not limit the treatment.

In case we are seeing the technology as a black box we put in the hazardous waste together

with oxygen into the burning oven. The first time the oven is running external flames heat the

smelter to 1450°C. If the fuel value in average is higher than ~10 MJ per kilogram the process

keeps on going by itself. The output of the smelter is guessed with: 20% water, 30% minerals

and 50% combustible resultings whereof 30% can be used as construction material which can

be used as a subsurface for building streets. The residues, like chlorides or sulfides, can be

calculated with ~2-4% and will be sold to the chemical industry for 5-10€/t. 20% of the ingoing

power is converted to electrical energy. Every five to six hours the smelter has to be opened

and the melt will be put out.

In their business plan Ensartech calculates with the gate fee companies will pay for let them

treat their waste. Companies which are paying actually more and are interested in a greener

footprint might be possible costumers. For the present way of treatment called ‘rotary furnace’

payments of 150-300€/t are common. Our job was to research on those companies, write a

dossier, that Ensartech can use to have a first, hopefully positive, contact.

At the moment Ensartech is building their first plant in Delfzijl, next to Groningen. The plant is

constructed for 25 metric tons per year.

Hazardous waste is waste that is dangerous or potentially harmful to our health or the environment. Hazardous

wastes can be liquids, solids, gases, or sludges. They can be discarded commercial products, like cleaning fluids

or pesticides, or the by-products of manufacturing processes.

http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/

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GovernmentsThe European Waste Law covers a juristic guideline for treating the waste of European Union

member states. The article is called ‘Guideline 2008/98/EG’ and came into effect in 12.12.2008

and should be transcribed until 12.12.2010.

The following image shows in which order waste should be treated in general:

Figure 1; priorities in treating waste source: waste brochure of the EU 2010

The hierarchy to prevent garbage at first, prepare it for re-use, recycle it, to recover it, like

burning, and as a last step land fill it counts on the one hand for municipal was but for indus-

trial waste, too.

The European member states got to enact laws to achieve this hierarchy. The national laws

always differ a little from each other.

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Moreover, each single waste generator has to treat the waste by himself or it has to be treated

by another company. Facilities and companies that want to treat waste have to be certified by

the responsible administration of each state. Hazardous waste has to be stored and treated

in a save way with elimination of any harms on the environment or humans and should not be

mixed with other dangerous waste.

Burning waste is just permitted in case that a high level of energy efficiency can be reached.

An international cover of treatment facilities is possible so is the international transport of

waste.

The gate fees differ from country to country especially concerning the taxes the government

forces. The tax guidelines are given in the appendix and were updated on the 29th September

2011 and give some average gate fees, too. Germany for example does not ask for a special

tax for treating waste but the companies have to put money aside to pay possible accidents.

Governments

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Global top 50 chemical companies

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The list of the ‘Global top 50 chemical companies’ was a guide for our election of the compa-

nies we researched on.

DOW Jones Sustainability IndexThe DOW Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) is a cooperation of DOW Jones Indexes and SAM

(Sustainable Asset Management) which considers economic, ecologic and social criteria. Just

the biggest 10% of each sector are allowed to join this index. A license from SAM or DOW

Jones Indexes is required to join the DJSI. These are divided into the global DJSI-World, DSJI-

Europe and DJSI-North-America.

Companies try to be listed in this index because it is an indicator for investments in those firms

and so used for advertisement. The aim is to reduce risks by valuating themes in environmen-

tal, social and ecological dimensions.

For collecting the data SAM sends sheets with questions to the companies which are answer-

ing it by themselves. Further information are given by the annual and sustainability reports

which are compared and valuated. The DJSI is a family of indexes evaluating the performance

of the world’s leaders in sustainability.

43% of the information are the same for each company and belong to the three sectors eco-

nomic, environment and social.

The organization themselves wants to balance the three fields equal with 1/3 each. These

information might not be right, so the focus could be more on corporate governance.

Interesting might be for Ensartech is, that the environmental part is just evaluated by open

available information of the companies. The last 57% were determined for each single branch

and has different influence on the three named sectors.

In the chemical sector DSM SE is the guiding company right now in 2011.

Companies that we researched and that are listed in the DJSI are the following: Bayer, BASF,

DOW, DSM, DuPont, Lanxess, PPG Industries, Solvay, Teijin.

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projectdocument // european project semester 2011-2012