Corvette plant's old paint recycled for power
Q. What do the Tennessee Valley Authority, General Motors and Waste Management have in common?Thanks to the "From Vettes to Watts" program, dried paint solids from the overspray (made from airborne paint that is sprayed onto the vehicle but doesn't stick) created at the GM Bowling Green Assembly Plant will soon be collected and shipped to a nearby power plant for consumption. Currently, the paint pieces are sent to the landfill. The TVA's Paradise Fossil plant will burn the paint solids, which is TVA's first attempt at turning this type of waste into energy. A Chrysler plant in St. Louis sends its paint solids to a nearby power plant for the same reason.
A. A Corvette plant in Kentucky.
Other less-wasteful auto paint shops include Ford's Ohio van plant with reduced emissions of volatile organic compounds and carbon dioxide, Ford's paint-fumes-to-fuel program, and BMW's methane-powered paint shop in Spartanburg.
[Source: Detroit Free Press via Kicking TIres]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Keith Wakeham 6:49PM (12/23/2008)
RTO - New GM paint shops have a way of dealing with this already. Recirculating thermal oxidizer - IE: Paint burner.
Toyota and Honda in Canada doesn't have an RTO, GM does in all new paint shops including Oshawa. It heats ceramics hot enough to burn paint using natural gas. When painting cars less natural gas is used, when not, the natural gas keeps it hot enough. Its good for the enviroment :-)
Reply
ronnie schreiber 2:05PM (12/24/2008)
"overspray (made from airborne paint that is sprayed onto the vehicle but doesn't stick)"
No, overspray is airborne paint that is never lands on the vehicle. If I'm not mistaken (and I worked in a DuPont paint lab that has an onsite duplicate of an assembly plant paint shop) the paint shops are downdraft booths. Air currents blow down, carrying much of the overspray through the floor grates and into a circulating water bath below the floor. The grates and walls are painted with a flexible strippable coating that easily peels off when the overspray accumulates. I'm pretty sure that the paint solids in question are that strippable coating covered with overspray.
Reply