Section 2 i) Initial Research Work - Gewerbliche Schule Ravensburg

GE90 EngineWe were given a presentation by Kerry Owens a member of the Green Skiesenvironmental team who spoke about the projects that the company are participatingin at the moment and projects that have already been implemented.Like virtually every area of human activity, air transport has an impact on theenvironment.The aviation industry is under increasing scrutiny. This is primarily due to theindustry projected growth rates of 4% to 5% per year, which outpaces manufactures’ability to introduce fuel efficiency improvements in aircraft engines to offset theemissions increase.As a responsible company within the aviation industry they are currently participatingin a project called green sky which comes under their ecoimagination project thataim it is to reduce the amount of emissions emitted into the atmosphere. Howeverthis is a project not implemented by management but implemented managed andmaintained by trade unions, employees, shop stewards and also environmentalists.It encourages members to think about their actions and what effect it has (E.g.leaving a light on would use more energy) not just in industry but also in their livesoutside work as well. However the company does offer incentives for ideas such asrewards and offering a range of different opportunities, as it is run by the shop floortradesmen who use the processes everyday more innovative ideas are produceddue to knowledge possessed by these people. Also they are investing in newtechnologies such as cold air blowers instead of paper towels for drying your handswhich save £15000 a year in energy and push taps which waste 70% less waterwaste plus reduce energy used due to you will need to heat less water. Under thisproject they have also installed an air desertification system which means that youonly have to turn air heating systems on a small amount so they use 20% lessenergy. These systems use 0.18kw motor which reduce emissions and are alsosourced locally. On site they recycle 18% of their nonhazardous waste. The sitegenerates over 800 tonnes of waste a year’s which costs them £95,000 per year andis paying 8-10 thousand more this year that last. Their goals for this to be achievedby 2013 are to at least double the rate of recycling on site reduce the cost of theirnon hazardous waste by 40% and progress to eliminate the need to send nonhazardous waste to landfill. To monitor the energy used by the company in differentsections of the factory they use an energy management system called RUM which alocal company. G.E’s energy team monitor this every 30 minutes to detect anyanomalies in energy usage and investigate these and indentify and fix the problem.42