Perth company AEC is conducting research on using
natural gas to reduce truck engine emissions.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto

A Perth-based R&D company is set to develop a natural gas fuel system for big trucks to help them meet the stringent Euro 4 emission standards introduced in Australia earlier this year.

Advanced Engine Components last month won a $236,000 Commercial Ready Plus grant from AusIndustry to further develop and adapt its natural gas fuel system to be used in vehicles that currently run on diesel.
 
The company says trucks that make the switch to the natural gas system will not only reduce engine emissions, but it will also lead to fuel savings of up to 30 per cent.

The company already produces a generic electronic fuel system – its Natural Gas Vehicle System (NGVS) – for some vehicles.

“It’s a fuel system that replaces diesel with natural gas, and the entire system is controlled by a computer, or electronic control unit (ECU), which has sensors that measure engine performance then manages the engine to give the performance required by the operator,” explains Tony Middleton, AEC’s managing director.

The AusIndustry grant will help the company customise its generic technology so it can be used in Isuzu trucks, a market leader in certain truck categories. The collaboration will also help the company make inroads in the American, South East Asian and European markets.

“The grant will cover two families of Isuzu vehicles with the bigger 295 horsepower and 510 horsepower engines,” he says.

“It will enable us to do the applied research and development to apply our system to these particular makes and models of engines.”

The company has 27 people working at its Malaga premises north of Perth, as well as two branches in China. Its natural gas fuel technology already powers hundreds of buses in Australia and Europe, including Renault and Mercedes Benz models.

He says using natural gas to power bigger vehicles such as rubbish trucks, concrete mixers and transport vehicles will lead to big savings in fuel costs, especially now that diesel prices are soaring.

He says AEC’s natural gas fuel system costs around $35,000 to install in diesel trucks and can help drivers reduce their fuel bills, and that the unit can pay for itself in fuel savings in about two years.

“Even at today’s prices, you’re looking at up to a 30 per cent reduction in fuel costs,” he says.

“So if you plan to use a truck for five years, it’ll pay for itself in two years, and then you’ve got three years of fuel savings at about 30 per cent of what you’re paying now.

“The other thing with natural gas is that you’re likely to get a fixed price for your fuel supply, which will go up according to CPI increases, rather than the price of diesel, which can go anywhere.”

Middleton says the timing of the grant could not be better with oil and diesel prices going up, the push to cleaner engine emissions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the fact that Australia and Asia Pacific region have secure supplies of huge natural gas supplies.

“The brief we have is the (natural gas converted) engine has to have same power, torque and drivability as the equivalent diesel engine,” says Middleton.

“It has to be reliable and give the same performance as the equivalent diesel. We say we can do that, and we also can give you better emissions, a much quieter engine and one that doesn’t have any of the particulates (soot) that are associated with diesel.”

Middleton says the R&D project to adapt the company’s system to the Isuzu engines and upgrading the components is likely to be completed by October 2008.