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by James Koloski, RDK Engineers, with photos by Joyce Chiu, Perceptive Informatics

On Thursday, June 24th close to 100 people braved a late afternoon thunderstorm to attend a powerful program on the sustainability efforts undertaken by the Millipore Corporation. Following a lively networking reception and light refreshments, David Newman, Millipore's Senior Director for Global Sustainability, reviewed the company's vision and mission to create a more sustainable company while Paul Lukitsch, Millipore's World-Wide Energy Manager, spent close to an hour delivering an in-depth view of the tangible changes Millipore has enacted to meet the sustainability challenge. And the results he described were no less than stunning.

Millipore Corporation treated the Chapter to an upclose and personal look at their sustainability efforts.

Since implementing the program in 2006, Millipore has achieved an impressive 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses, a 15 percent reduction in electricity use, a 30 percent reduction in the use of gas for their boilers and cut 22 percent of their water usage, all in demanding manufacturing environments.

Paul reviewed several projects that Millipore has undertaken to achieve these goals including a building envelope project that took the insulation value of a building housing a newly constructed clean room from an R1 to an R22. He also reviewed the construction of a new clean room that gets all of its electricity from Green-e certified wind energy. This exceeds the LEED requirements by a full 35 percent.

Paul Lukitsch, Millipore's World-Wide Energy Manager, described the many changes undertaken by Millipore to reduce energy use.

Following the presentation, attendees divided up into smaller tour-sized groups and were led on an interactive tour of the Bedford facility. A unique "shotgun-start" approach allowed each of the groups to ask tons of questions of the Millipore staff people manning each stop. Attendees were able to view the extensive solar arrays and inverter room that provide a portion of the facility's electricity. They got an up-close view of an individual solar panel demonstration in the courtyard that powered one of Millipore's Milli-Q Integral systems.

Individual motion-controlled, energy efficient T-5 fluorescent lighting in the warehouse illuminated another stop on the tour. Not only did the new lighting save electricity, the brighter illumination significantly reduced warehouse "pick errors," an additional and totally unexpected money saver. Yet another stop described a project that analyzed the use of compressed air, then achieved a significant KWH savings by using enhanced leak detection and lowering the overall operating pressure from 110 to 90 psi.

Light was also shed on a project in the cafeteria where the meeting took place. Millipore had retrofitted the lighting fixtures with digital dimming ballasts, occupancy sensors and wall controls to create a "light harvesting" environment that reacts to the room's usage and daylight availability to obtain maximum efficiency. At another stop, this time in the boiler room, everyone was able to view the controls enhancements to the existing boilers. that realized a 29 percent reduction in gas consumed and a 0.9 year simple payback.

Given all of this, probably the most talked about stop on the tour was to review the implementation of over 1,100 plug load controllers in individual employee workstations. The controllers provide a mix of continuous power and motion detected outlets that shut down non-critical equipment in each workstation when it is vacant. Everyone on the tour immediately saw a need in their own teenager's bedrooms for these controllers.

Many thanks to Dave Newman, Paul Lukitsch and their staff at Millipore. They provided extensive help in putting this program together and making it such a huge success. If you're interested in finding out more about the company's commitment to sustainability I would encourage you to visit the sustainability section on the company's website at www.millipore.com.