The Bigger Picture: Circular economy | Production water cycle
Hi I’m Sebastian copelan and I would like to take you on a journey every time I come back to places like this in the Arctic or Antarctica I see the collateral and remote impact of human activities and climate change what happens here is a cautionary tail for
The World At Large so what can be done about it and what is an automaker like Audi doing about it so let’s go explore we could be fooled into thinking that we’re having a nature walk here but we’re on the rooftop of the neam plant
Can you tell me a little bit about this for us this green rooftop is very important because it Source water and it’s a very good habitat for all insects and birds here in the plant I see a lot of technology here so the reason why we
Are here is to show you one purpose why we need water for automobile production we see here the most efficient cooling towers here in our plant that we use to cool the water from our welding robots in the second Floor this is incredible it feels like a movie yeah it’s like in the future but already there it really is so these machines run really hot and they need cooling yes they do run really hot during the welding process and like we saw before the water circles from here
From the robots up to the rooftop where we cool it down in these hybrid cooling towers water is a really important Source it’s a big goal for us to try to close all our water Loops in the plants to save as much water as possible in our car production process and where’s the
Water coming from now and where do you intend it for it to come later yeah currently we drawn the water from the river NECA which is next to our plant so Andres the the water comes from the river here and is transported can you tell me what’s going on over here here
We removed the carbon and the solid parts from the Water by adding chemicals over here that’s what you see here so all of that that you have that down there at the bottom do you know what that is these clouds down there or no carbonate and the solid parts solid
Parts okay for us it’s very important to no more drown any water from the river and his ecosystem here the nearby Neer but our plans in future is to connect the local purification plant with our new water treatment system and then use the gray water of the purification plant
For our processes so Thon what is the essence of the relationship that uh the plant has with with Audi yeah we get the waste water from the process from Audi also from the paint shop from Audi and we can clean it we have special techniques for this and then now we can
Create a circle and deliver water back and that’s it’s a new for us it’s a new process for us without you we couldn’t realize that project so we have to have you for support for this closed water loop this gives us the chance to keep 70% of our water in our Loop what
Happens to the remaining 30% we lose some of the water in our production process or through evaporation for example but to refill our Loop to get the 30% back we use again gray water of the purification plant and no water from the river especially we we want to have
A look on reducing our chemical demand and we do this in future with new technology that we build outside here as you have seen the construction area a new reverse osmosis treatment system and ultra filtration we will be able to reduce chemicals that’s really the essence of circularity right it’s just
Basically closing the loop in the water and uh and at the same time purifying the water yeah exactly we need water reuse yeah we have to use it more and more more again and again I think it’s important for the Future
Step into an electrifying episode of “The Bigger Picture”. Join polar explorer and photographer Sebastian Copeland on his journey to the Neckarsulm plant, experiencing Audi’s sustainable production through water circularity firsthand.
#Audi #VorsprungDurchTechnik #eMobility #TheBiggerPicture
