CASE STUDY
ICL discovers new uses for waste compounds
Industry
Specialty Chemicals
Solution
CAS Custom Services℠
KEY RESULT
75%
Of targeted waste compounds now in R&D
KEY RESULT
Months vs Years
Improvement in time to reach results
KEY RESULT
$1M+
Projected waste disposal savings over 5 years
The Challenge
Creating sustainable solutions from manufacturing waste
The disposal of waste products from chemical manufacturing is rarely simple. When byproducts pose risks to human health or the environment, the costs of storage, treatment, and disposal can be substantial and ongoing. For specialty chemical manufacturers, these costs represent not just a financial burden but a missed opportunity: waste compounds often contain value that, with the right insight, can be unlocked and redirected into the value chain.
ICL, a global leader in specialty chemicals spanning industrial agriculture, fire retardants, biocides, food supplements, and more, recognized this opportunity. The challenge was finding it. Insights about potential new applications for these compounds are typically buried in scientific journals, patents, and commercial and academic literature spread across thousands of disparate sources. Pinpointing relevant data and connecting the right pieces of information quickly enough to act on them is a significant undertaking that demands both scientific depth and efficient data infrastructure.
The Solution
Better data connections lead to better outcomes
ICL partnered with CAS to accelerate the research process. Using a combination of relational substance searches and AI-powered literature analysis applied to the well-indexed CAS Content Collection, the team was able to efficiently surface relevant insights across multiple scientific disciplines faster than a manual literature review would allow.
Rather than requiring ICL's subject matter experts to wade through broad search results, the custom analysis delivered highly targeted findings, allowing specialists to focus their time on evaluating promising leads rather than generating them. Connections across seemingly unrelated scientific disciplines opened up applications for target compounds that wouldn't have surfaced through conventional domain-specific searches. By combining these cross-disciplinary insights with an analysis of synthetic pathways from CAS and potential market opportunities, ICL was able to identify viable commercial uses for existing waste products.
"We wanted to find commercially sustainable uses for our byproducts, helping to reduce waste and make our production processes more efficient. CAS helped us do that."
– Aviad Karniel, Operations Manager, Central R&D, ICL
The Outcome
Waste turned into opportunity at speed
Within just a few months, the project identified application leads for 75% of ICL's targeted waste compounds. One lead has the potential to open a new market for ICL. Two others are already in feasibility testing for direct repurposing. Beyond the commercial upside, the environmental and operational benefits are significant: future storage demands are projected to decrease, along with the associated disposal and treatment costs. Repurposing these compounds is expected to eliminate hundreds of thousands of tons of waste per year, with millions of dollars in projected savings over the next five years.
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