Cummins’ manufacturing facility meeting line at its Jamestown Engine Plant in Lakewood, N.Y., the place its X15N engine might be produced. (Michael Freeze/Transport Subjects)
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Based on fleet executives in addition to fleet upkeep managers, the dying of the interior combustion engine might show to be significantly exaggerated despite the joy about electrical powertrains. Business leaders have been working to present the fundamental piston engine an prolonged life.
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The key to this life extension for ICEs lies in the usage of greener fuels as they permit decreased value of gasoline and upkeep for fleets whereas on the similar time decreasing greenhouse gases. These newer engines can even have a a lot simpler time maintaining with stringent upcoming emission requirements for major pollution like NOx, particulates and unburned hydrocarbons. Specialists consider the possible ultimate results of new gasoline know-how might be a far greener future that, on the similar time, will usually resemble the acquainted current.
“The issues of the diesel engine are extra associated to the gasoline than to the engine itself,” stated BJ Johnson, co-founder and CEO of ClearFlame Engine Applied sciences.
The brand new engines will all use lower-carbon fuels, lots of them derived from nonmineral sources that derive their power straight from the solar, thus decreasing CO2 within the ambiance. Renewable pure fuel will seize low-carbon methane from current sources like farming and landfills, and burn the gasoline in engines. Though these engines launch CO2, (CO2 is just one/thirtieth as potent a greenhouse fuel as methane), the quantity is lower than when operating on diesel gasoline, leading to a “carbon-negative” setting.
An engine is retrofitted with the ClearFlame combustion system, together with a ClearFlame Engine Management Module. (ClearFlame)
Cummins will introduce the X15N in 2024, a spark-ignited pure fuel engine that would be the first of the corporate’s engines primarily based on their new fuel-agnostic platform that makes use of frequent elements beneath the cylinder head. “The pure fuel engine can have a singular cylinder head for the required cooling, and its spark ignition system,” stated David King, Cummins’ North American on-highway product supervisor, pure and renewable fuel engines, including that the 15-liter engine might be a recreation changer due to its “rise up and go.”
The pure fuel engine can have 1,850 pound-feet of torque obtainable by 1,100 rpms and 1,800 pound-feet on the X15 diesel’s torque peak of 1,000 rpms. King additionally famous that it’s quieter than a diesel whether or not idling or producing grunt.
Westport Gasoline Techniques CEO David Johnson describes a unique sort of pure fuel engine primarily based on Rudolf Diesel’s unique principle. Powered by way of its excessive stress direct injection system developed by Westport, the engine burns pure fuel as its major gasoline with a tiny shot of diesel for ignition. The patented HPDI injector offers each fuels below excessive stress by way of a twin concentric needle design. It retains diesel-like effectivity, energy and torque, however wants to make use of liquefied pure fuel so its onboard gasoline pump can produce the high-injection stress wanted. It’ll additionally want a selective catalytic discount system for NOx and a easy diesel particulate filter. Westport and Volvo Group lately signed a letter of intent to make use of the system to cut back CO2 emissions, particularly when renewable pure fuel is the gasoline.
Hyliion created a hybrid mannequin, ERX Powertrain, which runs on renewable pure fuel. It combines a big battery pack on the rear of the cab with a 12-liter engine that runs on RNG. However in November of 2023 it introduced it plans to exit the Class 8 electrical powertrain enterprise, after finishing a strategic overview of its choices for the unit. As a substitute, the Austin, Texas-based unique tools producer will focus its consideration on the less expensive commercialization of its fuel-agnostic Karno stationary generator.
How efficient have third-party companies proved to be for fleets? Let’s discover out with Michael Precia of Fleetworthy Options and Dan Rutherford with Summit Digital CFO by Anders. Tune in above or by going to RoadSigns.ttnews.com.
Charles Mueller, scientist at Sandia Nationwide Laboratories, led an effort to develop ducted gasoline injection, which offers a small duct a brief distance from every spray produced by a diesel’s injector for higher gasoline/air mixing. The system reduces particulate to the purpose the place EGR can be utilized to kill NOx within the cylinder, eliminating the SCR system. When operating on oxygen-containing biofuels, the system might make it potential to satisfy NOx requirements with out exhaust fuel recirculation whereas additionally decreasing net-carbon emissions by 70%. Mueller is working with engine OEMs and low-net-carbon gasoline suppliers to retrofit a heavy-duty engine with DFI and display the know-how with a commercially obtainable, low-net-carbon gasoline and rapidly transfer the know-how nearer to business purposes.
Johnson described ClearFlame’s system that capitalizes on all the warmth already obtainable in a diesel engine to help the combustion of inexperienced fuels. Engines modified by way of ClearFlame’s system run on low-cetane fuels like ethanol that received’t ignite in bizarre diesels. The bottom line is permitting warmth ordinarily eliminated by the cost air and the EGR coolers to stay within the consumption air. This significantly raises the temperature within the cylinder on the high of the compression stroke, and that’s all that’s essential to ignite inexperienced fuels that don’t produce soot — that means no DPF is required. The engine’s potential to maintain its exhaust scorching permits a easy SCR system that can meet future, tighter NOx requirements.
Various Fuels
On the Engine Analysis Heart symposium on the College of Wisconsin final summer season, Andre Boehman, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the W.E. Lay Automotive Laboratory, mentioned low-net greenhouse fuel gasoline and engine applied sciences and introduced consideration to the diesel gasoline often known as dimethyl ether.
This illustration exhibits the highest of the upcoming Cummins hydrogen engine to be constructed on the corporate’s fuel-agnostic engine platform. (Cummins)
He famous that DME is a perfect diesel gasoline with a cetane score simply above what current diesel has and, containing oxygen, it burns with out smoke. It might simply be made out of renewable fuels like ethanol and plenty of others, even agricultural byproducts, and its smokeless character means a excessive tolerance for EGR to fight NOx emissions. Whereas it wants a pressurized tank, the stress generated is far decrease than even with propane, that means far decrease pressures than these wanted for pure fuel.
The gasoline requires a unique injection and combustion system from commonplace diesels because it evaporates very quick and has no pure lubricity, however possible will be tailored to be used in engines with acquainted injection and combustion methods.
OEMs equivalent to Volvo have on-road examined DME earlier than, whereas nations like Sweden have seen large-scale testing, the place 10 heavy-duty business vehicles drove greater than 1.5 million kilometers powered by the gasoline. One of many main challenges is engineering sufficient sturdiness into DME injection methods, a course of which may be augmented with unique lubricity brokers.
A notable different gasoline, hydrogen, is 100% inexperienced and simply created from inexperienced electrical energy. Westport’s Johnson factors out that gasoline cells are most effective at low masses, whereas piston engines are extra environment friendly as masses improve. Thus, an ICE will be the excellent manner to make use of hydrogen in business hauling, versus passenger vehicles the place engines cruise at low masses. He stated Westport’s HPDI pure fuel gasoline system is well tailored for retrofit to any inner combustion engine together with one which runs on hydrogen. He argues that the corporate’s in depth expertise supplying engines with gaseous fuels will give his firm a leg up within the hydrogen inner combustion engine market.
Cummins is creating a spark-ignited, hydrogen engine. Jim Nebergall, basic supervisor of Cummins Hydrogen Engine Enterprise, advised Transport Subjects that the corporate’s hydrogen engine, one other constructed on its fuel-agnostic platform, might be “a hybrid of our pure fuel and diesel engines. Will probably be spark-ignited, but direct injected.”
He defined that hydrogen creates such speedy flame journey that supplying gasoline and air premixed within the consumption manifold to the cylinders can permit flame to journey again into the manifold. Thus, a low-pressure gasoline system a bit like diesel injection will provide gasoline to the combustion chamber. The engine will resemble a diesel in that it’s going to run very lean, with the additional air permitting about 20% extra energy.
