Munich, Germany — BMW Group has begun electrically powering exhaust purification in its first paint shops using electric regenerative thermal oxidation (eRTO) systems.
This new eRTO method specifically involves using electricity, rather than natural gasses, to burn off gaseous or vaporous substances at temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius.
A press release from BMW Group notes that the new eRTO system is installed between the painting booth, drying process and chimney. From here, “thermal energy is recovered by a flat, two-metre-deep ceramic bed where temperatures reach up to 1,000 degrees Celsius and which serves as a recuperator. Electrical heating rods heat the surrounding ceramics, and because most of the heat is retained, with only small amounts escaping, a connected load of just a few hundred kilowatts is sufficient to run the system.”
In traditional methods, exhaust from paint booths and drying areas is purified to prevent solvents from harming the environment. This exhaust passed through a bed of ceramic media, where solvent residues are burned off.
“To do this, the air has to be heated up to very high temperatures in a short space of time,” explains BMW’s press release. “The energy needed to do this could previously only be provided by natural gas. But the innovative eRTO system now makes it possible to purify exhaust without fossil fuels and use electricity from renewable sources instead.”
The first eRTO system was tested at Plant Regensburg and BMW Brilliance in China. When the BMW Group’s newest plant goes live in Debrecen, Hungary in 2025, it will only use this new method.
Michele Melchiorre, head of production system, planning, tool shop, plant construction at the BMW Group commented that “for other energy-intensive paint shop processes, other energy-intensive paint shop processes, such as vehicle drying and water heating, solutions already exist for working without natural gas. So, electric exhaust purification is the final stepping stone for the BMW Group to run its paint shops on regenerative energy in the future.”
For more information, or to see the original press release, click here.
