SOLAR ENERGY 'IN A NEW LIGHT' AT BOEING: SOLAR HEATED WATER FOR PAINT BOOTH OPERATION AT BOEING'S SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH FACTORY

摘要

In developing a new paint booth design for use in application and cure of coatings on aircraft assemblies at its Salt Lake City, Utah manufacturing facilities, Boeing applied renewable energy through the use of evacuated tube solar water heating technology as developed by Apricus, Inc. to reduce energy consumption. This also helped achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for the 30,000 square-foot building. It's challenging to achieve LEED certification for an office building, but it's really challenging to make a paint facility LEED-certified. To do so the building was designed to include numerous large windows, a rainwater collection system; recycled and salvaged building materials and enhanced environmental controls. But what really makes the building stand out are the 3,600 rooftop mounted solar tubes that provide heating for a portion of the paint preparation, curing and drying operations. Located on the roof of the building, these tubes collect energy from the sun in a water and glycol solution which is used to preheat make-up air to the preparation and paint booths, supplementing heating from direct-fire natural gas burners. This installation is the first Boeing paint facility to be partially heated by solar energy. The new building, inside and out represents state-of-the-art paint operations. Coupled with its zero-waste-to-landfill program, using renewable energy and achieving LEED certification demonstrates Boeing Salt Lake City's commitment to improving its environmental footprint. At Boeing we've repeatedly seen that what's good for the environment is also good for business. The SLC team expects that the elements incorporated to achieve LEED Silver certification, including the solar tube water heating, will lower energy use and operating costs. For the curing process, team members expect energy consumption to be reduced by seven percent thanks to energy from the Sun. Once operational data is validated, Boeing hopes to replicate this application of renewable energy at other locations.