BMW Uses Landfill to Paint Cars
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 05. 9.06
BMW has partnered with a bunch of folk to pipe methane gas nearly 10 miles (16km) from a nearby landfill to their manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, U.S. This is where they stamp out the Z series (shown above), among others. The gas will be used to power the German automaker’s paint plant, which is said to munch about half of their assembly lines energy. It's anticipated that the process, which went on line this week, will save BMW at least $1 million (USD) per year. If put to another use the energy from the gas would provide the heating for 10,000 homes a year. And in one of those lovely figures that must be so much fun to calculate, they reckon diverting the gas from landfill will save 17,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, about equal to driving a car around the world 4,300 times! (While visiting their site we tried a peek at their Hydrogen Car project, a bivalent 12-cylinder engine that can run on both gasoline and liquid hydrogen, but our browser failed to compute, on the virtual tour. Maybe you’ll have better luck.) ::BMW USA via Island Packet.
yay for methane!!
that link seemd to work, but just in case, here's more on the internal combustion hydrogen beemers
yay for painting stupid expensive cars instead of heating homes!
It is kind of ironic that the bi-product of over consumption (landfill pollution) will be generating energy for the creation of more unneeded consumer products (a car which will produce 7.7 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually according to www.fueleconomy.gov).
It is good the methane is not being released into the atmosphere, but if we didn't throw away so much stuff we wouldn't have the problem of landfill methane product in the first place.
(Note: BMW sold 28,808 Z4s last year which will produce a total of 221,821 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.)
Wow, they must be after a bit more public support. I like cars, but it is great to see the manufacturers doing something environmental, even if it is nothing in relation to the pollution they cause every day.
I love the negativity. Here is a corporation that builds cars: generally a bad environmental player, right? But BMW was the first to build actual facilities to break down and recycle 80% of the material in their cars; they were the first to engineer cars with recyclability and low-energy-cost dismantling in mind; they've been working on alternative fuels (H2 combustion) since the 1970s, far ahead of the latest enviro-craze in the industry. And now that they've built an entire factory that is energetically self-sufficient (IIRC the Spartanburg plant actually puts energy INTO the grid) using waste materials, and they still get slammed. I suppose you would all like to see what happens if every automaker just closed its doors. I'm all for environmental reform (I work in solar energy conversion), but I also believe that every bit counts and creative thinkers should be praised. You're all probably the same people that laughed at BP making a solar-powered gas station. If we emitted no carbon on today's technology, you'd never get your tofu shipped to your door.