Suppliers’ Corner: Ship & Shore Environmental Engineering & Consulting

Like most businesses, Multifilm Packaging Corp. relies on good, profitable, reliable, and knowledge-able suppliers to operate a successful business. This edition’s contributor is Ship & Shore.

Ship & Shore Environmental, Inc. located in Signal Hill, California celebrated its 15th Anniversary in business on October 15th, 2015. We specialize in the engineering design, fab-rication, and service of emission control systems for a variety of manufacturing processes. The efficient capture and treatment of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, is our mission. In the simplest terms, we help our customers control their emissions, comply with the EPA, and remain as green as possible.

We worked closely with the Multifilm team on two projects which involved the capture of printing solvent emissions from two plants, where we in-stalled regenerative thermal oxidizers, or RTOs.  An RTO basically converts VOCs into carbon dioxide and water. Traditional thermal and catalytic oxidizers used natural gas to destroy VOCs.

RTOs go a step further by using built-in heat exchangers that offer approximately 95% thermal efficiency. Since VOCs have a BTU value similar to natural gas, the solvent emissions become a fuel that supplements the natural gas required to maintain the destruction/operating tem-perature of the RTO further increasing the energy efficiency. This is the “regenerative” part, where the VOCs themselves become the fuel that helps destroy the VOCs.

At start-up, RTOs use natural gas to reach an operating temperature of approximately 1500°F to meet destruction requirements and permit conditions set by local air quality regulators. In Multi-film’s case, when the preset RTO operating temperature is reached the flexographic printing operations may begin. As the ink/solvent mixture is applied to the film or foil and dried, the VOC emissions evaporate and are collected through ducting for treatment by the RTO.

Many times, the RTO operates with-out the need for natural gas. The PLC program is designed to keep the RTO at the required temperature to achieve oxidation of the VOCs. When sufficient BTUs are available in the VOC emission stream the natural gas supply to the burner can be turned off or turned down.

Since RTOs use significantly less natural gas than traditional oxidizers, many installations qualify for substantial cash incentives. We were able to assist Multifilm in obtaining cash in-centive for both projects in excess of $280,000 made available through local utility energy-efficiency programs. This is a very important part of the consulting services we provide, along with free initial consultations and energy-efficiency assessments. The utility incentive programs are a direct result of The Energy Independence & Security Act passed by Congress in 2007 to focus on moving America to-ward renewable fuel production for consumer protection and to increase energy efficiency of buildings, manufacturing plants, vehicles, greenhouse gas capture and storage, and to improve the energy performance of the federal government.

We think of ourselves as a one-stop-shop for environmental abatement equipment, as well as energy-efficiency and heat recovery strategies for retrofitting industrial and commercial equipment for energy reduction. Our products are made in the USA, we are a woman-owned, certified business with over 1,000 successful operational units in service.