Ford Powers With Paint

Dec. 21, 2004

Formally, it's known as the Fumes-to-Fuel System. And it's being tested at the Paint Shop of the Ford Rouge Center in Dearborn, Mich. In simplest terms, the environmentally friendly experiment is about generating electricity from paint fumes. Technically, it is the process of converting organic compounds found in paint fumes into hydrogen fuel for fuel cells and sending the electricity produced by the fuel cells to the center's power grid. Jointly developed by Ford Motor Co. and the utility Detroit Edison, the system, on which patents are pending, captures the volatile organic compounds present in paint fumes and concentrates them into a rich mixture of hydrocarbons, a source of fuel, Ford says. The company figures that an initial pilot system, installed last year, generates about 5,000 watts of electricity, enough to provide power for an average American home at any given moment. A larger system, expected to be put in place at another Ford location later this year, will have the capacity to produce more than 100,000 watts. "For years, we've been taking the fumes coming out of paint booths and incinerating them to protect air quality. Now we have a system that can do that even more efficiently, produce clean electricity and allow us to improve paint shop flexibility," Jay Richardson, Ford Rouge Center redevelopment manager and former Ford paint engineer, said in late April as Ford began publicizing the center's redevelopment. "When fully developed, this system has the potential to save Ford millions of dollars by reducing the cost of incinerating paint fumes in natural gas-fired furnaces, as we do now," said Mark Wherrett, the Fumes-to-Fuel System project leader and principal environmental engineer in Ford's environmental quality office. "It will also cost much less to install and maintain, virtually eliminate dioxide emissions and enable us to continue using solvent-based paints, which produce a better quality finish than powder- or water-based paints."

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.