Stuart Barker, Commercial Manager EU & UK at Indaver Solvents, explains how Indaver is enabling the chemicals industry to work towards a carbon-positive circular economy.
As an international environmental group focusing on sustainable material and energy management, Indaver – and more specifically its business unit Indaver Solvents – offers a range of comprehensive solutions for industrial stream management, recovery and recycling. Indaver is part of the privately-owned logistics group Katoen Natie.
With around 2,400 employees working at nearly 40 sites across Europe and the UK, Indaver recovers1.2 million tonnes of materials every year from a variety of industrial streams. Indaver’s core business is to run specialised facilities and to manage intelligent industrial stream management systems focusing on sustainable material and energy management.
Enabling the Circular Economy
The European Union’s Green Deal highlighted the need for us all to work towards economic growth without increasing our consumption of materials. Together, we need to build a more sustainable future. The sources on which we rely for our energy, the efficient use of raw materials, and the approaches and actions required to protect our people and planet, can all be optimised with the advance of the circular economy.
Indaver sees itself as an enabler and gatekeeper of the circular economy (Figure 1). Value can be created from used materials, from precious metal or solvents recovery, through plastics to chemicals, to effluent treatment. This is precisely what Indaver does, by investing in advanced facilities and innovative processes to recover a wide range of materials from industrial streams. In addition, Indaver’s treatment facilities create energy from the thermal treatment of waste. This energy is used, in the form of steam, hot water, green gas or electricity, for the company’s own processes. Any surplus energy is supplied to neighbouring businesses and residential areas.
Focus on Solvents
The treatment and recycling of solvents is an important topic in the chemical industry, as large amounts of solvents are generated and consumed annually. High-quality solvents are valuable and, in most cases, they are very well suited to material recycling applications. On the other hand, low-quality solvents might have limited added value as recycled materials, but they can still be recovered for use as an alternative fuel, so these are suited for energy recovery applications.
Therefore, solvents lend themselves well to a circular economy. Solvent recovery processes extract pre-used solvents from industrial streams, so they can be used again (and again). Using current technologies, companies can typically expect to recover up to 95% of used solvents from their streams, even from more complex mixtures. In terms of quality and purity, most recovered solvents are indistinguishable from virgin solvents, and they can be used for any solvent applications, including those requiring the highest grades.
Solvent recovery improves process efficiency, saves costs, and simplifies the supply chain by eliminating the need to purchase new solvents for every process. Furthermore, if the solvent recovery is performed on-site, it significantly reduces transportation costs, as well as reducing the overall supply chain burden and removing the need for expensive disposal procedures. By recycling solvents, companies can minimise the amounts of hazardous materials that need to be managed and disposed, while reducing the carbon footprint associated with producing and transporting new solvents. It has been estimated that recycling solvents can save 46% to 92% of greenhouse gas emissions, compared with virgin solvents.
Efficient and Sustainable Technologies
The goal is to provide solutions that are available, affordable and reliable. The ability to recover solvents from even small volumes of contaminated mixtures is important, if this approach is to bring value throughout industry. In order to achieve full circular recycling, it must be possible to leverage processes that can be scaled from small quantities to full-scale manufacture.
Solvent recovery is usually based on multi-stage fractionation and distillation. Both of these processes separate components based on differences in their boiling points, with fractionation offering a more refined separation by using a fractionating column to achieve multiple vapour-liquid equilibrium stages. These are efficient and sustainable approaches that achieve high-purity solvent recovery. However, recent developments in available technologies are allowing companies to even further raise the efficiency, capacity and sustainability of their solvent recycling processes.
Of note, modern technologies can enable the recovery of more complex solvents. For example, Indaver Solvents has inaugurated a new pressure swing plant at its UK site in Middlewich, Cheshire. This bespoke technology is a niche offering that enables the management of highly complex mixtures, as it can break azeotropes that conventional distillation plants struggle to process. Pressure swing plant technology is generally more economical than conventional extractive distillation methods, and no extra solvent is required to achieve the separation of solvent mixtures. Therefore, the use of Pressure Swing Distillation for the separation of azeotropic mixture adds another solution to the solvent recovery sector that drive us further towards a fully circular economy.
Indaver Solvents can rely on its own recycling facilities across Europe. The company is investing significantly to raise the efficiency, capacity and sustainability of its solvent recycling plants, so the company can manage, handle and process more complex flows, at a range of scales. However, as well as establishing its own state-of-the-art solvent recycling sites and recovery facilities, Indaver Solvents is well aware that the development of dedicated solvent recycling facilities on a customer’s site can be justifiable, depending on the volume and value of the recoverable solvents.
The On-site Model
Indaver takes a standard ‘DBFMO’ approach to expertly manage the Design, Build, Financing, Maintenance and Operation of new, dedicated on-site facilities. The development of on-site plants at the customer’s premises has several advantages, on top of the benefits of solvent recycling in general, such as:
- Reduction in transport requirements, with fewer heavy vehicles entering and leaving the customer’s site, and associated fuel and carbon savings
- Improved safety, with a reduced need for connecting and disconnecting trucks to tank farms
- Cost reductions because of the lower transportation costs
- Reduced overall supply chain burden
- Lower volumes of waste being sent off-site, and reduced need for costly disposal procedures.
| Expert management of on-site, decentralised solutions: ‘DBFMO’ |
| · Design: Indaver has in-house distillation experts/engineers which collaborate with external technology suppliers
· Build: Indaver has a wide network of contractors to build industrial plants · Finance: Indaver pays upfront capex, which is possible thanks to financial strength of Katoen Natie · Maintenance: Indaver owns the facilities and as such is responsible for maintaining them · Operations: Indaver owns the facilities and as such is responsible for operating them |
For example, plans are afoot to build a sustainable solvent recycling facility in Huddersfield, UK. This state-of-the-art facility will be located at Syngenta UK’s industrial estate. Syngenta, a global leader in agricultural manufacturing, will benefit from this facility, which will recover and recycle acetonitrile (ACN), a key solvent used in agricultural product production. The project represents a significant investment of £35 million in the UK economy and the plan is currently undergoing a feasibility assessment.
Indaver Solvents aims to build, own, and operate the facility, which will process and recycle Syngenta’s industrial stream in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. The facility will have the capacity to process and recycle15,000 tonnes of Syngenta’s industrial stream annually. By integrating a closed-loop system, all material processing will be conducted in a contained, controlled, and clean manner directly on-site. A direct pipeline network will connect a new production facility of Syngenta to the new recycling plant, ensuring efficient operations while minimising transportation needs. This innovative approach will enhance supply chain stability, reduce market volatility, and support Syngenta’s sustainability commitments.
R&D for solvent recycling
Indaver Solvents also operates a fine chemical manufacturing plant at its UK site in Middlewich. The company’s speciality resides in the research and development of fine chemicals from lab research, and lab trials to full plant scale-up for bespoke molecules and ester synthesis.
Indaver Solvents utilises its team’s extensive experience to research, develop and optimise processes. For example, a process that can be scaled on-site from small quantities to full-scale manufacture as a customer’s requirements evolve. In-house expertise allows Indaver Solvents to form strong relationships with its customers, enabling them to focus on core activities by assisting with subsidiary problems, process development and optimisation, new product development, waste minimisation, and improving raw material and energy utilisation.
In the future, Indaver Solvents intends to produce fine chemicals involving recycled solvents as the company believes that this will be the next step to close material cycles. That exciting and highly future-relevant research is going on right now.
Indaver Solvents also collaborates with established institutions to advance solvent recycling and provide solutions to contemporary global issues. For example, the rapid growth of the electric vehicle market has created a thriving battery industry. However, the manufacture of batteries requires large quantities of N-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP), which is a solvent that is needed for coating the electrodes. Conventionally, NMP recovery has been impractical due to difficulties arising from metal contamination. However, recent research by Indaver Solvents and the Flemish Institute for Technological Research has shown that an advanced separation technology can effectively remove these metals at a level that satisfies the strict purity standards of the battery and microelectronics industries.
Research leading to new approaches like this allow for the sustainable recovery and re-use of solvents while reducing costs and CO2 emissions. The practical, complete and safe re-use of critical substances is an important step towards full circular recycling, in which materials are not just reused, but even given higher value.
Precious metals recovery
With a focus on circular resource management, Inda-MP, another specialised division within the Indaver Group, provides sustainable solutions for the recovery of precious and rare metals from industrial waste liquids. Inda-MP applies a wide range of innovative separation and refining technologies that enable the cost-efficient retrieval of precious metals such as palladium, platinum, iridium, rhodium, and gold from solvents and aqueous streams.
These industrial waste liquids originate from the use of precious metals in pharmaceutical, agrochemical, fine chemical and electronics manufacturing. The recovered metals meet stringent quality requirements and are transferred back to the customer. By reintegrating these critical raw metals into the value chain, businesses are able to reduce dependency on primary mining, lower their environmental footprint, and maintain a secure and cost-effective supply of precious metals.
Water Purification
Inopsys, also part of the Indaver Group, offers on-site mobile and modular purification systems specifically designed to treat complex industrial wastewater streams contaminated with toxic or persistent substances. These solutions effectively remove and neutralise substances of very high concern (SVHC), including APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients), PFAS, heavy metals, and other toxic contaminants that pose a threat to human health and the environment. Inopsys enables companies in the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors to meet stringent discharge regulations while significantly reducing their environmental impact. Its innovative purification approach ensures compliance, minimizes off-site transport risks, and aligns with best practices for sustainable production – without compromising safety or operational efficiency.
Conclusion
Indaver – and its business units such as Indaver Solvents, Inda-MP and Inopsys – anticipate a future in which all companies embrace the principles of using their industrial streams to recover secondary raw materials and supply clean energies. As a growing and increasingly demanding global population calls on an ever-diminishing pool of resources, a circular economy provides the only logical solution.
Government targets all over the world highlight the need for countries to work towards economic growth without increasing the consumption of raw materials. Secondary raw materials recovered from industrial streams can replace primary raw materials if the recovered materials are of good quality, and as reliable and safe as the original forms. Indaver is committed to becoming the market leader for high grade materials recovery. To this end, it envisages itself as a gatekeeper and enabler of the circular economy.
Get in touch to find out how Indaver’s expert teams can help you.
Stuart Barker
Commercial Manager EU & UK
Indaver Solvents
Middlewich, Cheshire, UK
T: +44 (0) 1606 835271
