Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy presents green chemistry awards

Vacuum Plant wins top prize for vacuum cleaning technology; LG Electronics honored for AI-based substitute search

[123RF]
[123RF]

The Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy said Monday it will present awards to winning companies at the "Industrial Green Chemistry Best Practices Competition" during the opening ceremony of the 7th Chemical Safety Week, held at Seoul Dragon City in Yongsan-gu, Seoul.

The competition was established to identify cases in which companies developed or adopted low-toxicity substitute materials and technologies to fundamentally reduce the use of hazardous substances, and to raise public attention and understanding by sharing those voluntary green chemistry efforts across industry.

The ministry accepted submissions from Sept. 1 to Sept. 18 from domestic companies that manufacture, import or use chemical substances, then selected eight winning companies through a three-stage process — an initial written review, an in-person evaluation and an on-site verification — judged on scientific and technological innovation, the safety of substitute materials and technologies, and economic and industrial impact.

The grand prize (Minister of Climate, Environment and Energy Award) went to Vacuum Plant and LG Electronics, while the excellence prizes (Korea Environment Corporation President Award) went to Kumho Petrochemical, Earthform, dhSteel, Kukdo Chemical, Dongsung Chemical and Seongchang.

Vacuum Plant was highly rated for developing and distributing a cleaning machine that applies sealed vacuum cleaning, drying and regeneration technology, significantly reducing both the volume of hazardous chemicals — including trichloroethylene and methylene chloride — used in the cleaning process and workers' exposure to them.

LG Electronics won the grand prize for building a chemical management system and developing an AI-based substitute material search program that replaced 12 types of hazardous substances.

Among the excellence prize winners, Kumho Petrochemical succeeded in domestically producing hydrogenated bisphenol A, an eco-friendly substitute for bisphenol A, using its own proprietary manufacturing technology.

Earthform developed a material made from mushroom mycelium to replace styrofoam, while dhSteel achieved a significant reduction in the use of caustic soda — a hazardous chemical — through process improvements.

Kukdo Chemical developed a new amine-based curing agent with reduced hazardousness, and Dongsung Chemical won an excellence prize for manufacturing packaging materials using bioplastics and foaming technology.

Seongchang rounded out the excellence prize winners by introducing a boiler and cooling-water scale inhibitor that uses chemicals with lower hazardousness.

The ministry plans to publish a best-practices compendium featuring the winning companies' cases and share their methods for reducing hazardous substances on-site, as well as their experience transitioning to safer materials and processes, across the broader industry.

Park Ryun-min, director general of the ministry's Environmental Health Bureau, said the ministry would "actively identify and disseminate green chemistry best practices and support companies in building a foundation for the green chemistry transition, so that safer and more sustainable chemical use can take root across industrial sites."


thlee@heraldcorp.com