Environmental News wasted," says Denise Van Valkenburg, an environmental engineer at Steelcase. Steelcase's new plant is being designed to meet the "green building" criteria published by the U.S. Green Building Council, which has a membership that includes more than 400 government and international organizations, such as United Technologies, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Bank of America. Most of these criteria are designed for office and commercial buildings, but Steelcase plans to meet them with its manufacturing plant. According to Rinard the new plant will incorporate criteria such as the use of recycled content materials retention ponds for stormwater drain off and a managed forest "The plant manager plans to plant 3000-4000 [indigenous] trees so in 50 years we can use the trees for the furniture we manufacture here " savs Rinard To demonstrate its environmental commitment, Steelcase is retiring the old facility's unused air emission credits, which are valued at approximately $5 million. In Michigan, "we have a free
trade system to encourage companies to reduce emissions and meet regulatory limits," says Rinard. Steelcase anticipates 400 tons per year of emissions reductions in the new plant, which it could sell to other companies for $2000-$3000 per ton, but instead it is retiring them. Since 1989, Steelcase has cut its VOC emissions from the manufacture of its steel furniture by 76%. —PATRICIA DEMPSEY
A water-based finishing process is expected to dramatically reduce a furniture plant's VOC emissions.
McDonough to redesign Ford's industrial complex Ford Motor Co.'s aging Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Ml, an icon of American industrialism, is slated for a dramatic redesign by architect William McDonough, who is known for sustainable designs such as the Nike Europe headquarters. Scheduled to begin this spring and take 20 years to complete, the goal of the redesign, according to Ford Chairman William Clay Ford Jr., is to create "a visible testament" to Ford's environmental leadership. Ford chose McDonough for the $2 billion overhaul of the 1212-acre complex, which contains six Ford plants, the Rouge Steel Co., and the Double Eagle Steel Co., because "he realized we were speaking the same language," says McDonough. "We're talking about a new paradigm that integrates design with manufacturing." McDonough's vision of sustainable manufacturing is "an industrial transformation, incorporating the redesign of products to be cyclical rather than cradle-to-grave, [and using] biological systems and materials with [a] long-term utility." Plans for the plant, to be announced this month, will address restoration of the waterfront areas and the ailing Rouqe River and create public access to historical sites. —P.D.
Gasoline additive gets physical to attack pollution A small, Virginia-based company called General Technology Applications, Inc. (GTA), is trying to position its pollution-abating gasoline additive, polyisobutylene, as an attractive alternative to fuel oxygenates like methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and ethanol. The company says it has met with its greatest successes in China, but it is clearly facing an uphill battle. At the American Chemical Society (ACS) 220th National Meeting in Washington in August, Paul Waters of American University's Department of Chemistry and a scientific consultant to GTA, reported that polyisobutylene can produce a 70% decrease in emissions of carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and nitrooxides. Waters says that the additive can play the same pollu-
tion-reducing role as MTBE, which a blue-ribbon panel convened by EPA suggested be phased out because of its tendency to contaminate drinking water. In addition to reducing pollution, GTA's additive ratchets up horsepower by 10% and increases mileage by 20%, according to company testing. Waters says that the additive can be used in engines ranging from small twocycle motors to large diesels; it is currently an ingredient in aftermarket products for cleaning engine components and enhancing performance. The standard method for reducing combustion pollution is to change the fuel's chemical properties, but polyisobutylene is based on a physical approach.
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The additive is based on high molecular weight polymers that alter the size of fuel droplets so they are more uniform when the fuel is sprayed into an internal combustion chamber for ignition, according GTA literature. This uniformity allows the fuel to be combusted more efficiently, Waters explains. The company holds a patent on the technology, which was originally developed in the 1980s to create an "antimisting" jet fuel to reduce the chance that a fireball would form in die wake of a plane crash he says. The compound is similar in formulation to polymers used in chewing gum and caulking paste and is considered nontoxic The additive's use of polymers, which are notoriously heavy and do not burn well, may make it a
Government Watch
These antimisting fuel tests show that polyisobutylene can increase the efficiency of fuel combustion by making the fuel droplets sprayed into a combustion chamber more uniform in size. The photo on the left shows unenhanced fuel, while the photo on the right shows how the additive reduces the amount of uncombusted black smoke.
hard sell to the oil industry, says Graham Swift, the polymer chemist who co-organized the ACS session. The chemists at the session were convinced that the science behind polyisobutylene is good, Swift says, acknowledging that GTA needed to undertake more tests to prove that the polymer is combusted completely. But the oil industry's reaction has been mixed. David Lax, senior environmental scientist with the American Petroleum Institute (API), says that most of his organization's member companies that are familiar with polyisobutylene "don't drink very highly of it—the company hasn't demonstrated diat it works effectively." And Ralph McGill, a senior development staff member of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee who has been involved in alternative fuels development, says he believes that die additive could help achieve better fuel atomization but he was dubious about GTA's emissions ductions claims But Jim Dadura, chief scientific officer at MDE Chem, Inc., a small additives company in Houston, and former business manager of Texaco Additives Co., says, "In my professional opinion, there is something there," while stressing that the technology requires further testing. To date, GTA has only been able to conduct limited testing to prove its claims due to budget constraints. Field tests of the additive are currently being conducted by researchers in California, Maryland, and Wisconsin, as well as in China, Japan, and Ire-
land, according to Jerry Trippe, president of GTA, which is based in Gainesville, VA. But because of the intensity with which trade secrets are guarded in the oil industry and their reluctance to interfere with the testers' independence, Trippe and Waters declined to provide the names of any testers other than David Timoney, a mechanical engineer with University College, Dublin. Trippe did divulge that the additive was being tested at four refineries in China where a new fuel policy was passed this year to reduce automotive air pollution A surmountable hurdle to polyisobutylene's use in the United States is the law mandating the use of oxygenates to reduce automotive fuel emissions. Although polyisobutylene can perform the same role, it is not an oxygenate. But API has proposed a deal in a congressional bill (S. 2723) whereby oil companies could be absolved from the oxygenate requirement by using substitutes that match or exceed the pollution-reducing performance of IV1TBE says Marc Meteyer API's fuels team leader noting that a National Academy of Sciences report released last year found that both MTBE and its most common substitute ethanol do little to reduce smog and are likely to worsen pollution Lester Wyborny, a chemical engineer with EPA's Office of Transportation Air Quality, and McGill both said that their agencies are willing to test promising candidates to replace MTBE.— KELLYN BETTS
caused by persistent toxic substances and eventually develop a list of recommendations for preventing their release, as well as help pinpoint additional substances for reduction. UNEP has divided the globe into 12 regions where teams of local experts will quantify releases from sources such as agriculture, pest control, and industrial use. But substances targeted for reduction will not be the same in each region because of differences in agricultural and industrial production and climate. The assessment is an extension of international action to negotiate a global treaty by the end of this year to reduce releases of 12 POPs [Environ Sci Technol .199 32(117 394A-395A)
Industrial waste in fertilizers Heavy metals and dioxin in fertilizer may be regulated for the first time once a draft U.S. EPA rule is finalized. The proposal, expected to be published next month, stems from a 1998 lawsuit filed by the environmental group Sierra Club, which charged that industrial waste in farm and garden fertilizers threatens human health and the environment. Although most fertilizers pose no environmental risk a handful of products contain hazardous waste such as iron mine tailings and electric arc f u r m r p dust from steel mill*: which are arlrleri hp-
cause they provide essential plant micronutrients, but these fertilizers also contain toxic metals. The proposed rule would set limits based on treatment technologies for arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, nickel, mercury, and selenium. Dioxin-contaminated waste in fertilizer would be limited to 8 ppt Continued on Page 415A
