News Release: October 20, 2003
Contact: Steve Wilson, ext. 245The New Jersey Business & Industry Association will present the Valero Refining Company-New Jersey of Paulsboro with its Environmental Quality award during the 2003 Awards for Excellence Dinner to be held October 21 at the Westin Princeton at Forrestal Village.
The Environmental Quality Award is presented annually to companies that have done outstanding work to preserve or enhance the quality of the natural environment. Valero is being honored for installing a state-of-the-art emissions scrubber that will substantially enhance its protection of the Delaware River ecosystem.
"When it comes to protecting the environment, Valero puts its money where its mouth is," NJBIA President Philip Kirschner said. "The company could have installed less costly equipment that would have met regulatory requirements. But that wasn't good enough. Valero went the extra mile, even though it was much more costly."
In 2002, Valero purchased a new scrubber to reduce emissions generated by the Fluid Catalytic Cracking unit at its Paulsboro plant. Typical non-regenerative type stack gas scrubbers remove substantial quantities of sulfur compounds and particulates from the air, but transfers them to the water in the form of sodium salts measured as total dissolved solids (TDS).
While TDSs do not pose a serious health threat, they can affect the health of a local ecosystem. The company is installing a regenerative Belco Scrubber at more than $10 million over the cost of a non-regenerative unit. This will be the first regenerative-type stack gas scrubber in the United States, and only the second one in the world.
The regenerative scrubber recycles a process stream within the unit, reducing the TDS discharge by as much as 85 percent. At Valero, the Belco scrubber is expected to discharge between 21,000-44,000 lbs/day, compared to over 150,000 lbs/day that would have been discharged if the company had installed the less expensive non-regenerative scrubber.
Since 1984, NJBIA annually has honored a select group of its members with an Award for Excellence. The Awards for Excellence winners demonstrate outstanding achievements in one of three award categories: Environmental Quality, Outstanding Employer, and Enterprise. A Public Service award is also presented to one or more individual business professionals. All NJBIA member companies are eligible to be nominated.
An independent panel of judges comprised of members of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) selected the winners along with three NJBIA policy committee chairs: JoAnn Trezza, Human Resources Committee; Edward Hogan, Environmental Quality Committee; and Tim Carden, Economic Development Council.
WithumSmith+Brown, the New Jersey-based accounting and consulting firm, verified the information supplied by the winning applicants.
With more than 20,000 member companies, NJBIA is one of the nation's largest state-level employer associations.
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