Monitoring & metering A BACKGROUND
Employing over 1,300 people at more than 24 locations, Elementis is a specialty chemicals company with operations worldwide. The company is focused on distinctive, high-value solutions and products to improve performance and enhance sustainability for customers in the personal care and product performance specialties markets. The Elementis plant at Sotkamo produces Talc according to market demand, as well as Nickel concentrate as a by-product. Talc is one of the softest minerals, and with platy and hydrophobic characteristics it adds value to a range of industrial products including paper, paints and coatings, polyester putties, plastics, ceramics, food, and fertilisers. Nickel is used in a wide range of industrial applications such as the manufacture of stainless steel. However, its importance has been heightened in recent years as a component of rechargeable batteries – in electric vehicles for example.
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING Elementis constantly aims to design better products that use less resources and create less pollution. In addition, the company has
70 August 2024 Instrumentation Monthly
new continuous metals monitoring technology was recently trialled at a river by a Talc production plant in central Finland. The trial was conducted to assess the possibility of avoiding the need to sample and analyse
large numbers of environmental water samples. “The results were extremely enlightening,” explains Jari Sirviö, development engineer for Elementis, the plant’s owner. “Luckily, a heavy rainfall event occurred during the brief trial, and we discovered a rapid increase, and subsequent decrease, in nickel concentration that closely followed the rain. This strong correlation between rainfall and nickel provides an important insight into the behaviour of nickel, and raises a number of important questions; it also highlights the enormous benefits that can be gained from continuous monitoring.” It is common practice globally, to monitor metals concentrations by sampling for laboratory analysis, and the plant had previously taken samples three times per week. In contrast, the continuous and automated monitor makes a measurement every five minutes, 24/7. “Lab analysis would not have been able to demonstrate the correlation between rainfall and nickel concentration,” Sirviö explains. “We are therefore delighted to see that this new monitoring technology can deliver greater insights into the factors affecting water quality, so that we can continuously improve our environmental performance.”
The new monitoring technology employs
Micro-Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy (µDOES), and was supplied by the Finnish company Sensmet.
METALS MONITOR REVEALS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
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