N E W S
Kiwi technology
offers
petrochemical
waste solution
An award-winning University of Canterbury
designed process to recover raw
materials could create a global solution
to petrochemical waste, improve productivity
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18 December 2018
UC researcher Dr Matthew Cowan receives his Innovation Jumpstart award
and WNT Ventures sponsorship worth $35,000 from Jon Sandbrook, Investment
www.vikingltd.co.nz
www.vikingltd.co.nz
Manager at WNT Ventures.
151b McLeod Rd, Te Atatu South 0610, Auckland, NZ. Ph 09 835 4090, Fax 09 835 4070
151b McLeod Rd, Te Atatu South 0610, Auckland, NZ. Ph 09 835 4090, Fax 09 835 4070
REN074
Kraft Heinz gets
new wastewater
solution
Kraft Heinz China has selected
Veolia Water Technologies to
provide the multinational food
manufacturer with a wastewater
treatment solution for its new soy
sauce plant in Guangdong, China.
The implementation of Veolia’s
technologies at Kraft Heinz’s new
plant in Guangdong will enable
them to meet the stringent
national and provincial discharge
standards.
An American food company
formed by the merger of Kraft
Foods Group and Heinz in 2015,
Kraft Heinz is the fifth-largest
food and beverage company
in the world. The new Kraft
Heinz Yangjiang food factory
in Guangdong covers an area
of over 13 hectares, and will
produce about 125,000 tonnes of
soy sauce per year. “This project
is a testament to the quality of
Veolia’s wastewater treatment
solutions."
RR Fisher & Co Ltd
PO Box 23293 Auckland
Auckland
Ph: 09 278 4059 Fax: 09 279 8286
Christchurch
Ph: 03 377 0025 Fax: 03 377 0086
EN082
and increase efficiency.
University of Canterbury Chemical and
Process Engineering lecturer Dr Matthew
Cowan is developing an innovative
process for recovering raw materials
which will make producing specialty
plastics and chemicals more efficient
and less wasteful.
“Petrochemical companies use a lot of
energy in order to produce the products
they do. Any waste saving can
have a great impact on the bottom line,”
Dr Cowan says.
“This technology is a process which will
decrease the cost of separating materials
from waste in order for those products
to be recovered efficiently. The
benefit of this idea is that you can get
back raw materials in liquid solutions
that have dissolved and have previously
been hard to recover.
“The ability to recover raw materials has
also been demonstrated to be lucrative
for the producer of the materials.”
Dr Cowan, a Rutherford postdoctoral
fellow, was recently awarded a $20,000
grant from Innovation Jumpstart 2018
to transform his ideas and research into
commercial reality, as well as $35,000
worth of practical services and support
from technology incubator and early
stage investor, WNT Ventures.
It was while researching another innovation
that Dr Cowan came up with the
answer to recovering feedstock chemicals.
As part of another project, he interviewed
118 professionals in the United
States petrochemicals industry and
the same problem kept cropping up.
“Companies don’t want interference in
their core business but are much more
receptive to innovations around their
waste stream. There’s much less risk
when you’re working with the rubbish,”
he says.
The recycling of waste products from
these chemical reactions in order to
recycle them will create economic benefits
for an international market with potential
for engineering and operational
jobs, he says.
“This solution can integrate into existing
chemical plant structures with minimal
disruption to plant operations, which
could create extra jobs for engineers as
well as operators.”
/www.vikingltd.co.nz
/www.vikingltd.co.nz