Scottish Petrochemical Plant Saves Water With GE Water & Process Technologies Solution

• INEOS’ Grangemouth Facility Honored with Ecomagination Leadership and Return on Environment Awards
• Using GE’s GenGard*, TrueSense* and InSight* Technologies, INEOS Realized Water Conservation in the Region of 100 Million Gallons of Water per Annum

GE Water & Process Technologies has honored INEOS with its prestigious Ecomagination Leadership and Return on Environment (ROE) awards to recognize the petrochemical manufacturer for its noteworthy reductions in water usage and associated costs savings on its KG ethylene plant at its petrochemical complex in Grangemouth, Scotland.

Faced with a water cooling system that was limited to four cycles due to calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate scaling, the KG plant team collaborated with GE Water & Process Technologies to address these issues and thereby increase the cycles of their cooling water. Specifically, Water & Process Technologies provided the asset with its GenGard* corrosion treatment chemistry, TrueSense* cooling water technology and InSight* asset performance management (APM) system.

By implementing this solution, INEOS would have the ability to potentially increase the water cycles in the cooling tower system to eight cycles, which would conserve approximately 100 million gallons of water per year and thereby deliver significant savings.

“As one of the largest manufacturers in Scotland, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our environmental performance. We have made significant upgrades and investments in recent years to improve the reliability and efficiency of the plant. Following the implementation of GE’s technologies, we have seen a considerable decrease in water usage,” said Kenny Stevenson, KG plant manager. “We are very honored that GE Water & Process Technologies recognized our efforts with these Ecomagination Leadership and ROE awards.”

GE’s InSight APM system and service reliability center allowed for continuous monitoring of key water parameters between service visits, which ensured that any issue that could increase the scaling due to increased cycles were addressed quickly and efficiently.

“Effective cooling water system operation is critical to reducing water usage and operating costs at petrochemical plants. By applying data analytics to online information from the plant’s cooling system, we can continuously optimize our chemical treatment solution and help INEOS reach its business and environmental goals,” said Amy Ericson, global leader, chemical and monitoring solutions—GE Water & Process Technologies. “INEOS’ petrochemical plant in Grangemouth, Scotland, is a great example of how monitoring solutions can achieve desired results for our customers. INEOS is deserving of both the Ecomagination Leadership and ROE awards for its many environmental successes.”

The GE Water & Process Technologies Ecomagination Leadership award recognizes the achievements of industrial users for striking a positive balance between today's economic, industrial and sustainability challenges. It is given to the top customers in environmental and economic performance. The business’ prestigious ROE award honors significant environmental (water, energy, resource) accomplishments.

INEOS is a global manufacturer of petrochemicals, specialty chemicals and oil products. It comprises 18 businesses each with a major chemical company heritage. Its production network spans 67 sites in 16 countries throughout the world. Grangemouth represents INEOS’ largest manufacturing site by volume of products. It is home to Scotland’s only crude oil refinery and produces the bulk of fuels used in Scotland.

Its Grangemouth petrochemical plant makes around 1 million tonnes per annum of product, which is used as the building blocks in the manufacturing of household items. These include synthetic ethanol, ethylene, propylene and polymers (polyethylene and polypropylene). INEOS’ products are used extensively in the petrochemical industry and transformed into bottles and pipes, cabling and insulation and food packaging and are used in the pharmaceutical industry.

About Water & Process Technologies
With operations in 130 countries and employing over 7,500 people worldwide, GE Water & Process Technologies applies its innovations, expertise and global capabilities to solve customers’ toughest water and process challenges. It offers a comprehensive set of chemical and equipment solutions, as well as predictive analytics, to enhance water, wastewater and process productivity. Water & Process Technologies strives to enable customers to meet increasing demands for clean water, overcome scarcity challenges, strengthen environmental stewardship and comply with regulatory requirements.

About GE
GE is the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the "GE Store," through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry. For more information, visit www.ge.com.

* Trademark of General Electric Company; may be registered in one or more countries.