Jun. 18--Most consumers probably never stop to think about all the earthly problems being created by their Screaming Yellow Mustang or a Silver Birch Clearcoat Metallic Expedition. But priming, painting and clear coating millions of new cars and trucks every year is a stinky, complicated process that creates millions of pounds of dirty waste at assembly plants around the world. Around the world, nearly 70 million pounds of paint fumes are collected by automakers and burned in multimillion-dollar incinerators, which devour about 350 kilowatts of energy per hour. Another 44 million pounds of paint overspray, meanwhile, are captured, treated and consolidated into nonhazardous sludge that is eventually dumped in landfills.

Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co., however, is helping to pioneer new, more environmentally friendly ways of dealing with the eco-challenges created by the painting. The automaker has been working with its suppliers to develop a fumes-to-fuel system -- now ready for prime-time use -- that converts the volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, given off by paint fumes into fuel that generates power instead of consuming it. Ford first tested the system in 2004 at its Rouge Center in Dearborn -- a test bed for environmental innovations and the crown jewel of the company's manufacturing facilities.

That pilot program proved the fumes-to- fuel concept was possible. Two years later, Ford is wrapping up another fumes-to-fuel pilot program at its Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, where the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator are built. That pilot showed how a full-scale fumes-to-fuel concept really worked in day-to-day plant life and allowed engineers to work out the kinks. Now, Ford is preparing to roll out fumes-to-fuel systems at other plants as equipment is updated and replaced. The company's minivan plant in Oakville, Ontario, which builds the Ford Freestar and Mercury Monterey, is scheduled to install a fumes-to- fuel system early next year.

A cost saver Besides saving energy, the fumes-to-fuel system costs less to install and maintain than existing furnaces. What's more, it enables Ford to use higher- quality, solvent-based paints that usually generate more VOCs. The fumes-to-fuel technology, developed in conjunction with DTE Energy, won an Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Excellence Award in 2004. Other suppliers, such as Environmental C&C Inc. of Clifton Park, N.Y., and Climate Technologies of Northville, have also played a role in bringing the system to fruition. Tiny beads of carbon On the rooftop of the Michigan Truck Plant earlier this month, Aaron Hula, an environmental-control engineer in Ford's Environmental Quality Office, explained how the fumes-to-fuel system works: In the first stage, air and the VOCs from the paint booths at the plant are funneled into a concentrator.

The concentrator separates the VOCs from the air -- cleaning it -- by using tiny carbon beads that look like poppy seeds. The dirty air is forced up into a chamber, where it collides with the tiny seeds that are working their way down the chamber. The porous seeds trap the VOCs in their rough little surfaces. The clean air is released into the sky, and the seeds are then scrubbed of their VOCs in another chamber by being heated to more than 600 degrees. The clean seeds are reused to capture more dirty VOCs. But the rich hydrocarbon exhaust created by the VOCs can be used for fuel. (Hydrocarbon is the same component that gives natural gas its punch.) Ford has been experimenting with different ways of using the fuel created by the process.

At the Ford Rouge Center, the hydrocarbons are converted into a hydrogen-rich gas that is turned into power in a fuel cell, where a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen molecules is used to create electricity. At Michigan Truck, the gas is fed into a regular combustion engine, which uses the fuel to generate about 55 kilowatt-hours of electric power every hour -- enough for an average city block. The power is then put back into the power grid for the plant and could power the massive lighting system in one of the plants' extensive paint lines. The fumes-to- fuel system scheduled for the Ontario plant will use a fuel-cell generator, as Ford continues to experiment with different modifications of the system.

Mark Wherrett, Ford's principal environmental engineer, said the program has been a complete success. "We're very pleased with the results so far," he said. "It's a pollution-control system that uses less energy than the old system."