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Vermeer, Inc.

In the rural community of Pella, Iowa, two major industrial firms have grown to large proportion. One of them is Vermeer, Inc., a major construction, agricultural, and heavy equipment manufacturer. Vermeer has seven large manufacturing centers each using solvents and generating a waste stream totaling over 82,500 gallons per year at an annual cost in excess of $400,000. Their existing distillation system produced only half the volume required. It produced reclaimed solvent with 3- 8% water content and the butanol compnent was out of specification. The reclaim would not clean effectively and plant personnel refused to use anything but virgin material.

Vermeer needed to reduce the water content, recover the base MAK at high purity level, and re-blend the butanol back to the specification. Additional goals included reduction of liabilities, reducing the virgin purchases by using more reclaimed solvent, and reducing the costs associated with recovery, re-blend and waste disposal.

Vermeer had worked with another firm in the past and was skeptical of achieving the desired distillation results. To validate PRI’s hypothesis, Vermeer came to PRI’s Dupo, IL, facilities and witnessed bench scale distillation tests and the results achieved. They observed that by batch processing the dirty solvent through a distillation unit equipped with a water drop out system, the distillation system could recover the MAK and reduce the water content to less than 1%. Upon completion of the distillation process, the volume of solvent in the blend tank was automatically measured, an appropriate volume of butanol automatically added, and the blend mixed in the tank to a consistent 94% MAK/6% butanol ratio. Stringent testing on numerous occasions found the blend to consistently be +/- 1% of the desired result.

Vermeer, like many other firms, has found that hardware is not the only consideration in a distillation system. In-depth knowledge of the chemical processes that take place and how to apply that knowledge to the operation of the unit are also key requirements of a vendor. Progressive Recovery has the benefit of 20 years of chemical processing knowledge and operating experience from over 2,000 units in the field. Every firm should be sure the vendor they chose to work with will solve their problem and not just create more problems