Our client is the Specialty Polymers site of a leading chemical company, generating over €10 billion in revenues and achieving an EBITDA of more than €2 billion, demonstrating strong financial performance and industry leadership.
Key Challenges
- Root causes identification & Advanced Problem Solving
- Loss reduction, as Losses summed up to more than 10 Million € (the reactor came to a standstill 4 times due to this process failure. The problems were so severe that output reduced to less than 50%)
- Client efforts were without success, the root cause(s) had not been identified, and the problem was not resolved
Approach
- EFESO put a team together consisting of Engineers in Chemical Technology and Applied Physics and problem solving experts
- For this complex problem the PM analysis was used, this very thorough approach looks at the Physical Phenomena to really understand the Mechanism of the problem
- After carefully excluding most possible causes the root cause was identified as related to the introduction of a new chemical used for lubrication and sealing in a pump upstream of the reactor
- Reversing the root-cause established a good stable high performance of the Urea reactor
Results
- Problem was fully eradicated
- Reactor performance is stable, high performance
- Root-cause identified and using causal effects
- Early indicators of the problem identified to monitor possible decay
- Internal change processes to prevent similar mistakes
In my 36-year career this is the most frustrating problem I have ever had to deal with. I would never have guessed that that was the root-cause
Senior Technologist Urea Factory
