Anguil Named the Midwest’s Exporter of the Year!

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Anguil is Honored for Export Excellence by the SBA for both the State of Wisconsin and Midwest Region.

Anguil Environmental Systems Inc. has been honored for the second year in a row with the 2007 Small Industrial Exporter Award for the state of Wisconsin. Anguil was one of nine Wisconsin companies that received the Governor’s Export Achievement Award from the offices of Governor Jim Doyle.

The Small Business Administration also recognized the company with a Regional award for Industrial Exporter of 2007 and Anguil is now being considered on the National level.

The Wisconsin International Trade Conference is the largest gathering of international trade professionals in the state. The award criteria included the degree of export-related growth; innovative techniques and approaches that resulted in the company’s success; and demonstration of extra effort in capturing worldwide markets. Anguil is extremely honored to receive the acknowledgement in the Small Industrial Exporter Category and expects to see continued success overseas in the upcoming years.

“Wisconsin exports have shown four straight years of incredibly strong growth, and our growth continues to surpass that of the nation,” Doyle said in a statement.

Milwaukee Paper Highlights Anguil’s Growth

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Clearer skies overseas;
Anguil Environmental finds niche in global air pollution control

By RICK BARRETT rbarrett@journalsentinel.com

At a time when many Wisconsin companies are alarmed about business and technology being exported to Asia, a small Brown Deer firm is proving that it can compete overseas through contracts in Taiwan, Korea and China.

With only about 35 employees, Anguil Environmental Systems Inc. has become a global player in its field of designing and installing air pollution control equipment. About 25% of the company’s $20 million in annual sales comes from overseas business, including contracts from large conglomerates such as Hyundai Motor Co.

In December, Anguil landed three Asian orders to provide air pollution control equipment for Formosa Chemical Co. in Taiwan. The orders, totaling just under $4 million, followed a $1.5 million order from Hyundai for equipment at one of the Korean company’s plants in China. A weak U.S. dollar and strong economies in various regions of the world have helped American companies get overseas business, said Gene Anguil, founder and chairman of Anguil Environmental Systems.

“Exporters can do much better,” he said. “In some cases it’s cheaper to build something here and ship it overseas,” than to have the same product built in another country that’s closer to the end user.

Anguil designs and installs oxidizers, which look like large metal boxes perched atop the roofs of factories and printing companies. Pollutants that are emitted during manufacturing are channeled into the oxidizer, which uses heat to destroy the chemicals and convert them into carbon dioxide and water vapor.

Anguil has installed about 1,500 pollution control systems around the world, with its key markets being the United States, Taiwan and Europe.

The company has sold equipment in Taiwan for about 10 years, largely because that country has some of the strictest environmental standards in Asia.

The migration of international companies into China has helped Anguil’s sales, since the multinational organizations are already familiar
with pollution control requirements in their home countries.

“When these large companies establish plants in China, they don’t want to be perceived as having one set of environmental standards at home and another set of (weaker) standards for China,” Anguil said. “So that’s been a driver” of sales.

China has a pressing need for pollution control equipment. It has some of the world’s dirtiest air and is trying to clean things up in a short period of time, partly to gain acceptance by the international political community and the World Trade Organization.

Not all developing nations are trying as hard to improve the environment. Often there’s a constant battle between the economy and the environment, with clean air losing out to factories that produce jobs and contribute to a country’s economic growth.

“I think that will always be the situation,” Anguil said. “Even in this country, when the economy is not that good and our federal government is not that strong on the environment, we see companies dragging their feet for years” on installing pollution control equipment.

Anguil designs its own equipment, and company officials say aspects of the designs are sophisticated enough that it’s difficult for foreign competitors to copy them.

“We recognize the risk is there,” Anguil said. But companies that need pollution control systems usually don’t want to risk buying imitation systems, only to find out they weren’t effective and resulted in millions of dollars in air pollution fines.

Emphasis on engineering and problem solving can give U.S. companies a competitive edge, said Dale Wiza, chairman of the Milwaukee chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

“There are things that can’t easily be copied,” he said.

Anguil & Canmaker JL Clark Teamwork Highlighted in The Canmaker Magazine

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canmakerThis is how J L Clark exceeded the US EPA’s VOC abatement requirements at its Rockford, Illinois, litho plant: a PLC controlled RTO from Anguil Environmental Systems

Canmakers in the US are increasingly concerned about the need to comply with regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on air quality, specifically volatile organic compound (VOC) and hazardous air pollutant (HAP) control.

Last November the EPA issued a final rule that established national emission standards for coating operations in regions that generated large volumes of VOCs. The standards (5,700 litres or 1,500 gallons of coatings per year) outline various control requirements based on usage of affected VOCs but also provide for emission reduction by using a capture system in conjunction with pollution control devices.

With legislation looming on the horizon, Rockford, Illinois-based lithographer and canmaker J L Clark last year began a thorough review to find a system that would exceed the minimum EPA requirements cost-effectively. “This was not the first time that J L Clark had taken steps to control their emissions,” said Gordon VerWeyst, J L Clark’s vice president of product development & engineering.

“Years earlier, the company had installed several recuperative thermal oxidiser (RTO) systems that had satisfied earlier requirements but had, over the years, become outdated and were a significant drain on the plant’s operations budget. Costs to operate the systems had become a major component of J L Clark’s annual fuel usage.”

J L Clark chose Anguil Environmental Systems, based at Milwaukee in Wisconsin, to supply a bigger 50,000 scfm regenerative thermal oxidiser to control the emissions, and a permanent total enclosure (PTE) to capture the emissions from the plant’s six printing and coating lines.

The RTO destroys VOCs with high temperature oxidation, converting them to carbon dioxide and water vapour, and reusing the released energy. Anguil’s vice president of sales & marketing, Chris Anguil explains how it works: “Process gas with VOC contaminants enters the two chamber RTO through an inlet manifold. Aflow-control valve directs this gas into an energy recovery chamber which preheats the process stream. The process gas and contaminants are progressively heated in the ceramic bed as they move toward the combustion chamber.

“The VOCs are then oxidised, releasing energy in the second ceramic bed, thereby reducing any auxiliary fuel requirement. The ceramic bed is heated and the gas is cooled so that the outlet gas temperature is only slightly higher than the inlet temperature. The flow-control valve switches and alternates the ceramic beds so each is in inlet and outlet mode.

“If the process gas contains enough VOCs, the energy released from their combustion allows self-sustained operation. For example, at 95 percent thermal energy recovery, the outlet temperature may be only 77 deg F (25 deg C) higher than the inlet process gas temperature,” he says.

PLC-based electronics automatically control the RTO’s operation, from startup to shutdown, reducing the necessity for operators to be involved.

Meanwhile, the permanent total enclosure contributes significantly to the reduction in VOCs released to the atmosphere.

VerWeyst says: “We selected the PTE system because it enabled our litho lines to run without individual burdensome enclosures and exhaust hoods over each line. This allowed the operator’s room to do their job without interference. The PTE also allowed us to forgo the yearly EPA capture inspections that are required on a singularly captured line.”

Adds Anguil: “The PTE at J L Clark has proven effective at capturing the emissions from the wet-end coating operations of the process lines: that exhaust is combined with the exhaust from the ovens at the inlet of the RTO. This results in 100 percent capture efficiency of the VOC/HAP emissions assuring capture efficiency requirements and eventual destruction.

“The RTO itself has proven to be similarly effective, achieving destruction efficiency in excess of 99 percent while exceeding all fuel usage reduction objectives. The combined capture and destruction efficiency has therefore exceeded 99 percent for the facility, minimizing the overall VOC/HAP emissions from the plant and allowing it to meet their emissions cap,” he says.

Originally published in October of 2004 in Canmaker Magazine.