TechView
BMW’s Looking Down in the Dumps
For a decade or so certain automakers have been bragging that this facility or that assembly plant is a zero-landfill operation. Some have even reached the level where they say their entire manu- facturing effort contributes nothing to landfills. While these companies shun landfills, BMW has a certain fondness for them. Te company sees nothing wrong
with reducing the amount of waste in landfills, they say: Eliminating waste is a good lean principle. It also helps protect the environment and promotes sustain- ability—and that’s exactly what BMW Manufacturing’s Spartanburg, SC, site is interested in landfills for. Te auto- maker hopes to eventually use hydrogen extracted from the methane drawn from landfills as a power source. To that end, in March 2013 BMW extended the use of hydrogen fuel-cell material-handling equipment across its entire 4.0 million ſt2 (372,000 m2
) South Carolina
production facility. Tis now gives the company a fleet of about 230 material-handling units to service the entire plant’s production and logis- tics functions. Tat’s up from the 100 units that went into service in 2010 when BMW opened a hydrogen storage and distribution area near the plant’s Energy Center to power the equipment. To handle the additional demand of
the new equipment, BMW added two new higher-capacity compressors, new storage tubes and distribution piping,
and eight new hydrogen dispensers to its hydrogen fueling station. It is said to be capable of delivering a minimum of 400 kg of hydrogen a day, the equiva- lent of 4.1 million kW-hr of electricity a year. Te initial phase of the program reportedly delivered the equivalent of 1.8 million kW-hr a year.
The automaker hopes to eventually use hydrogen extracted from landfills as a power source.
While the hydrogen for the material-
handling equipment is sourced com- mercially now, BMW hopes the Landfill Gas-to-Hydrogen Pilot Project will eventually have it looking down in the
James D. Sawyer Senior Editor
sion process. Now, in the second stage, the project team, led by South Carolina Research Authority, is implementing and testing equipment that will monitor the purity of the hydrogen. For its part, BMW has installed a system that takes a stream of landfill gas (post-siloxane removal), removes the sulfur and trace contaminants and, ultimately, produces hydrogen via a Steam Methane Re- former (SMR). Te final phase of this project is
slated for late 2013, when BMW will conduct side-by-side trials of material- handling equipment fueled by landfill- derived hydrogen versus commercially- sourced hydrogen. “BMW is very pleased with the
progress we have been able to achieve,” said Cleve Beaufort, BMW Group’s Energy Manager for the US and Canada. “The objective of generating renewable hydrogen from methane is proving to be a possible option for BMW and will be transformational for the fuel-cell industry.” Te fuel-cell industry? Indeed. Early in 2013
A worker tops up the tank of a material-handling vehicle with hydrogen at BMW’s Spartanburg, SC, plant.
dumps for the hydrogen converted from the methane generated by landfills. Begun in 2011, the initial stage of
the program validated the economic and technical feasibility of the conver-
BMW and Toyota announced they were collaborating on developing an automotive fuel-cell system. But that’s probably a story for another Yearbook. Until then, if you’d like to learn about another
company that uses landfill waste—and biomass—as an energy source, visit
http://tinyurl.com/creativewaste to learn what healthcare giant Baxter Interna- tional Inc. is doing in this vein.
Motorized Vehicle Manufacturing 41
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212