Xerox' new toner plant under construction in Webster, N.Y., will be a showplace for "green" processes and technology.
Not only is the building the most energy-efficient that Xerox has ever designed, but it also will be used to manufacture Xerox's patented EA (Emulsion Aggregation) toner, which requires substantially less energy per pound to make than conventional printer and copier toner.
The 100,000-square-foot facility represents a $59 million investment for Xerox, including about $20 million for the plant. It is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2007. According to Edouard Langlois, principal engineer and the building's "father," a key design goal for the plant has been to take energy out of the process everywhere possible.
To meet that goal, Langlois and his team rewrote the rules. Instead of planning the building and the manufacturing process separately, they integrated the two from the start. The result is an "intelligent building," packed with sensors and organized into multiple zones that can be separately controlled for most efficient operation.
Recipes for Efficiency
"Before, Xerox would plan the building and then put the process in it," Langlois says. "This time we started with a process and wrapped a building shell around it."
In a typical building, one set of controls operates the heat, cooling and other building functions while another controller is responsible for the manufacturing process. In a move that Langlois says is "somewhat radical," the same computer system will control both.
Langlois says the plant will be run by "recipes," eliminating the need for decisions and minimizing human intervention. More than 3,000 sensors in the five-story building, will feed information about temperature, humidity, air flow, and other variables into a networked system. The system divides the plant into zones and will schedule temperature and lights as well as toner production in each separate zone. Depending on the process being run, whole zones of the building may be shut off to reduce energy use.
Xerox is installing chillers and air compressors with variable-speed drives so that the plant will be able to respond to incremental changes in the operating environment rather than just being off or operating at full speed. There will be variable intensity lighting and small back-up compressors available for very low use.
"Anything that is operated by power will be flexible so that we can so we have full control over energy use," Langlois says.
A New Standard of Green
In addition, the manufacturing process itself has been redesigned to be even greener. Currently it takes 25 percent less energy to grow a pound of EA toner from chemical components than it does to crush large particles of plastics, colorants and other additives into conventional toner particles. The new EA plant will be even more efficient. It will use an improved process that produces more toner for the same amount of total facility and process energy.
The plant also will be a big - but smart - user of water since each pound of EA toner produced by the water-based process takes a few gallons of water. Langlois says that Xerox has a specially designed process to treat the water before it leaves the site.
"The wastewater will meet - even exceed - environmental permit requirements before we discharge it," he says.
In all, the new plant promises a new standard of greenness for Xerox and a leg up on meeting the goals of Energy Challenge 2012, a Xerox initiative to reduce energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
"The plant's innovation and design aligns with the core values Xerox has followed since its inception to protect the environment and to push ourselves to ever-higher standards of performance," said Patricia Calkins, vice president, Xerox Environment, Health and Safety.
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