A recently announced goal calls for Ford to cut the amount of water used to make each vehicle 30 percent globally by 2015, compared with 2009. The Chennai Assembly Plant will have zero wastewater discharge, thanks to an innovative process that treats the plant’s wastewater and recycles it back into our manufacturing processes.
The Company's plants in Asia Pacific and Africa share in this aggressive goal, and have already reduced water usage per vehicle by 25% from 2000 to 2011. Innovative water saving technologies are also being implemented at other Ford plants in the region, including the Chongqing, China and Sanand, India assembly plants.
To reach zero liquid discharge, the Chennai plant is implementing a combination of physical, chemical and biological treatment operations. Wastewater streams from the assembly and engine plants are individually pre-treated before being mixed with sanitary and cafeteria wastewaters. Following biological treatment, the stream passes through media filtration and activated carbon before it is ultra-filtered. This final stream is sent to a 3-stage reverse osmosis system which produces a large volume of salt-free water and a small volume of concentrated brine. The water in the brine is boiled off, condensed and reused in the plant leaving behind a solid salt.
