Process Area Event – [I See Now-56]: 100% Purity of Finished Products

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At my previous workplace, when the environmental protection agency came for inspections, it was mainly focused on solid waste. Inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency pointed out that the quantity of solid waste did not match, and it was necessary to compare the actual amount of solid waste with the records kept. Then it was pointed out that one of these low-boiling substances is temporarily treated as solid waste in the environmental impact assessment, and you do not have any physical sample of it. Later, after examining the environmental impact assessment report in detail, issues were identified. The assessment indicated that a large amount of low-boiling substances are generated as waste, amounting to over 2,000 tons per year. With a disposal cost of 4,500 yuan per ton, and considering that these substances result from reactions involving raw materials, the total cost comes to over 10,000 yuan per ton. In other words, the company will have to spend more than 20 million yuan on this. Then the material balance was carefully checked, and it was finally found that the finished product was calculated at 100%. The purity of grade A products according to national standards is 99%, while that of premium grade products is 99.5%. In reality, the purity of the product cannot reach 100%; in other words, there are low-boiling impurities present in the finished product. Based on the actual production conditions, and taking into account the ratio of first-class to top-quality products, the material balance was recalculated with a purity of 99.3%, resulting in a significant reduction in the amount of low-boiling substances produced by the 250,000 tons per year of product output. Therefore, an application for environmental changes was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency.