Eastman Chemical Co., Kingsport, Tenn., was one of 17 American Chemistry Council (ACC) members honored at the annual ACC Responsible Care Conference and Expo for implementing energy-efficiency improvements in 2012. Eastman received six of the 66 awards presented for outstanding projects, marking the 20th consecutive year the company has earned energy efficiency awards from ACC.

Eastman’s Tennessee Operations in Kingsport received awards for several projects involving heating and cooling.

One recognized project involves a speed control system that was installed on three fans in a cooling tower. This project allows fan speed to be controlled using a strategy based on water outlet temperature versus running continually at maximum speed. A control plan was also put in place to shut down fans as needed to maintain maximum efficiency. This project resulted in an annual savings of 14,500 MMBTU and greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 877 tons.

Another of the projects recognized by ACC is a chiller optimization project that uses cool river water available during the winter months to lower the energy required to run various refrigeration machines used by the company’s utilities organization. Annually, this effort saves 35,000 MMBTU and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 2,110 tons.

ACC also recognized a project that involves evaporator solids control. To reduce the amount of acetic acid being sent back to weak acid recovery instead of to refining, more effective solids control by the evaporators was achieved by installing dedicated base draw-off pumps from the evaporators. This equates to annualized energy savings of 27,568 MMBTU and an annual greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 2,860 tons.