Background

SABIC Innovative Plastics was undergoing a major expansion of their GTX resins process at the Noryl plant in Bergen Op Zoom Netherlands. The expansion included a much more automated blending and extrusion system which would provide dramatic improvements in efficiency, product consistency, and rapid changeovers. They anticipated one of the blend components for their new resins would be very poor flowing and were concerned that the anticipated results may not be realized.

The Problem

The new system had to avoid flow problems in order to be successful. The SABIC design team wanted to avoid costly delays and any quality or productivity issues with the new resin especially as may be seen by the OEMs.

Jenike & Johanson's Solution

Jenike and Johanson was requested to provide project engineering support to the team and advise as to how to handle the materials to ensure reliable, consistent flow. Our approach was to measure the relevant flow properties of the additives. Included in this analysis was the consideration of volatile content, and elevated processing conditions that contributed to the poor handling nature of the materials. This provided the design basis for developing functional layouts of feed options to achieve highly accurate dosing in a loose free-flowing consistency at a rate of 11 kg in 10 seconds, intermittently, batch-after-batch.

The Result

The expansion was successfully implemented. Acceptance batches of the new grade were made available to the OEMs. By fall of 2009, full production was underway with the new resin supplying a substantial weight savings that would reduce fuel consumption by an estimated 530 million liters per year. Ruud Trion, SABIC Engineering Process Lead stated, “The project achieved all its key goals realizing significant production targets, including substantial manufacturing cost reductions and product quality improvements. We consider J&J the global experts on solids handling. The work J&J did for us was of great help in understanding our product behavior and enabled us to make the necessary process improvements.”

“We are impressed not only by J&J’s level of theoretical knowledge, but also by their insight in industrial practices and the translation from theory into practical solutions. From my experience, this distinguishes J&J from their competition.”

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