ENERMIN · Energy-Use Minimization in Residuals Management in the Personal Care Product Industry

All industries produce residuals during normal operation, and the handling of such materials is a regular component of business activity. Traditionally, such residuals are treated prior to disposal; however, most residual processing methods are designed to reduce residual mass rather than minimize energy use, which is a growing problem as the cost of energy continues to rise. As an example up to 10% of the energy cost of a personal care product manufacturing plant (PCP) is used in residual management. Given this high cost, residual handling methods must be re-evaluated and made more energy efficient both to reduce costs, but also to make these processes more environmentally friendly. The purpose of ENERMIN is to develop alternate residuals management technologies for the PCP industry that will broadly reduce energy use. Although this is valuable technical goal, the second major intention of this work is to stimulate interactions between a world-leading academic group (Newcastle University; United Kingdom), a large corporation (L’Oreal Industries; France), and a SME (ACS-Umwelttechnik; Germany) while generating technologies that can be translated broadly to small and large operations inside and outside of the PCP industry. Specific technical approaches for energy minimization will include retrofitting existing aerobic systems to lower air needs; source separation of carbon-rich residual streams for pre-processing prior to aeration, and a new focus on waste-to-energy technologies (i.e., anaerobic systems). The broad goal here is to develop residual management systems that convert residuals into “resources” that produce rather than use energy, possibly by enhanced methane generation as a biofuel. Finally, this project will permit the extension of ECOSERV, a current FP6 project that is applying fundamental principles from ecology, mathematics, and molecular biology to improve residual management approaches, which can then be extended to the “practical” world via ENERMIN