Saint Gobain Performance Plastics

Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics in Hoosick Falls develops polymer products for industrial applications. These products include performance plastic substrates, which are converted into film and tape for the heat sealing, food preparation, plumbing, electronics, and aerospace industries.

By-products of Saint-Gobain’s processes include volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The efficient treatment of these pollutants is a problem because it requires enormous amounts of energy and must occur at a very high temperature.

Saint-Gobain’s VOC treatment used to achieve only a 65 percent fuel efficiency rate. Part of the reason for such low efficiency was that the process exhaust contained silicon vapors, which became silica dust particles in the burner chamber and resulted in obstruction of the conventional Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO).  With State support, Saint-Gobain installed a 95 percent fuel efficient, silicone-optimized RTO. The RTO has a 99 percent VOC destruction efficiency rate and can achieve higher temperatures while using less energy.

Benefits of the project include:

  1. Reduction in annual propane use by over 500,000 gallons (49,776 MMBtu)
  2. Higher oxidation temperatures that result in greater VOC destruction
  3. Over $1 million dollars in annual energy savings

Efforts are underway to make the RTO even more efficient by configuring a heat exchanger for integration with the silicone-optimized RTO. This configuration is expected to capture heat that would otherwise be lost and transfer it to a heating fluid which will be used elsewhere in the factory to offset the consumption of other fuels.

The benefits of this additional research are expected to include:

    • Additional reduction in annual propane use of 94,000 gallons (8,600 MMBtu)
    • Job retention
    • Increased ability to remain competitive in the global market