The BMW Engine Plant in Steyr has reached a milestone in its efforts to continually improve environmental protection.
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Through the application of a completely new process and waste water concept, using a new combination of various membrane technologies, all manufacturing waste water in the plant is treated and fed back into the production system. As a result the mains drainage connection for operating waste water from the production area was closed at the end of 2006, which means that around 30 million litres of water will be saved each year.
Water is used to create an emulsion with coolants for milling and turning, and for washing or rinsing during the finishing of cylinder heads, crank cases, crank shafts and connecting rods. Even in the BMW engine plant in Steyr, which produces around 60% of all BMW engines, water is an element that cannot be replaced by anything. However it can be treated.
A waste water treatment system using nanofiltration technology was introduced back in 2003. “This system produced such convincing results that we decided on the ambitious objective of further improving our waste water treatment so that in the future we would be able to introduce a completely enclosed water cycle for production”, said Franz Hornbachner, responsible for planning what is called ‘fluid technology’, talking about the moment when the idea of waste-water-free production was born.
This objective became a reality at the beginning of the year. Through a combination of ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis and evaporator systems, waste water is transformed back into valuable process water – using purely physical methods, without the addition of any chemicals. The waste water goes through three stages. Firstly, oil residues are removed from the waste water by ultrafiltration. Then heavy metals and low-volatility lipophilic substances, i.e. surfactants (surface-active substances) are removed from the water by nanofiltration. In the third stage of the waste water treatment, dissolved salts and short-chain organic compounds are removed by reverse osmosis.
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By GlobalDataThe BMW Group has invested around EUR1.5m in these technologies over the last three years. The largest engine plant in the BMW Group will save 30 million litres of water a year altogether through the new technology – which is the same amount of water used on average each year by a village of 750 inhabitants.
The BMW plant in Steyr is also saving a considerable amount on sewage charges.
According to BMW, the Steyr water cycle is an example of the Clean Production philosophy of the BMW Group, which aims always to implement the most sustainable production methods at each site. The individual solutions introduced at sites to handle water as a resource make a massive difference overall: since the year 2000, the use of process water in the group has fallen by a quarter for each vehicle produced.
