ESD-SIC

Decreasing an industry leader’s environmental impact

To make outstanding products, you need raw materials that are just as good. ESD-SIC has established its market presence with this in mind. The company is a Netherlands-based producer of high-grade silicon carbide, a material used in abrasives, refractories, technical ceramics and metallurgical products. While they are recognized by the EU as the most environmentally benign silicon carbide producer, ESD-SIC wanted to further reduce its footprint by minimizing odor and dust emissions from its plant in Delfzijl.

An energy-intensive industry with unique challenges

Producing an extremely rare mineral is no easy task. ESD-SIC operates in an energy-intensive industry. The company consumes 400 gigawatt hours of electricity per year (the equivalent of 100,000 households in the Netherlands) to run its operation. Reducing energy consumption for production is extremely important to decrease costs and minimize environmental impact.

At the same time, odor and dust, byproducts of the production process, need to be reduced to comply with regulations and protect the health of the company’s employees. Occasionally, the company’s furnaces may experience a blowout, causing unwanted odor and dust to escape.

ESD had already been looking for a way to reduce or prevent these blowouts entirely. They regularly collect data, aiming to control and understand the blowouts’ underlying causes. However, given the sheer amount of data available, they had trouble connecting and analyzing different data sets. They found the help they needed in ORTEC’s analytics expertise.

Reducing emissions with analytics

“ORTEC has a lot of knowledge and experience in handling big data sets. We had multiple data sources but were not able to connect the data, let alone perform a full analysis. They helped us connect these data sets and carry out a proper statistical analysis, helping us discover what input factors could increase the possibility of blowouts. With their help, we found two important causes which will lay the groundwork for future improvements.” – Joost Demmink, Process Technologist at ESD-SIC

ORTEC performed an analysis of ESD’s data to identify possible correlations between blowouts and external factors, such as groundwater levels. Our team also analyzed different data sets to understand the different sources of odor emissions using Excel, linear interpolation and a statistical analysis dashboard we developed in R (R language is widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and data analysis).

Better for people, profit and planet

With the insights gained following ORTEC’s analysis, ESD-SIC will be able to further improve their production process to avoid product loss and decrease environmental impact. Thanks to the analysis, the company will also be able to improve occupational safety for its staff.