HDT’s 2022 Newsmaker of the Year: The Internal Combustion Engine
by Deborah Lockridge (Heavy Duty Trucking) … The news this year was full of the latest ICE developments, making the internal combustion engine HDT’s 2022 Newsmaker of the Year.
As Srikanth Padmanabhan, president of Cummins’ engine business, said in announcing the company’s “fuel-agnostic” engine platform, “getting to zero is not a light-switch event.
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Renewable natural gas and renewable diesel are already available in some areas that can be used in existing CNG and diesel engines. And in the coming years, the industry will see more alternative-fuel options for internal combustion engines, as well as ever-cleaner diesel engines, even hybrids.
Greener Fuels for Trucking
The wave of news started in January, when Werner Enterprises and Cummins announced the fleet would begin validation and integration of Cummins’ 15L natural gas and 15L hydrogen internal combustion engines in its heavy-duty trucks.
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The company’s B, L and X-Series engine portfolios for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles will see the addition of versions that operate on fuels such as gasoline, natural gas, hydrogen and propane. They will use engine blocks and core components that share common architectures but will be optimized for different low-carbon fuel types. Each engine version will operate using a different, single fuel.
At ACT Expo in California in May, Cummins unveiled a 15L hydrogen engine that is expected to go into full production in 2027. Hydrogen internal combustion engines can use zero-carbon fuel at a lower initial price than a fuel-cell or battery-electric vehicle with little modification to today’s vehicles, according to the company.
A few months later, Westport announced it had developed a new fuel system that can burn hydrogen in heavy-duty IC truck engines.
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Another approach we saw this year was ClearFlame’s engine modification technology, which allows existing heavy-duty engines to run on a range of renewable fuels in place of diesel fuel. Through better thermal management, ClearFlame’s technology enables these alternative liquid fuels to behave like diesel fuel, with no loss of efficiency or power, according to the company. For their first trucks, they’ve chosen ethanol based on its lower emissions, lower cost and widespread availability.
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Greener Fuels, Cleaner Diesels
Renewable natural gas and renewable diesel are more sustainable versions of fuels already used in engines, offering emissions reduction without changing the engine.
Low-carbon renewable diesel and biodiesel fuels are delivering significant greenhouse gas and other emissions reductions in California, and hold expanded opportunities for reducing carbon emissions from the trucking sector in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and six other Northeastern states, according to the Diesel Technology Forum.
A recent study evaluating options for commercial truck fleets in the Northeast found that compared to a full electrification strategy, between now and 2032, three times the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions can be achieved at 25% of the cost by accelerating the turnover of older trucks to new advanced technology diesel models and using low-carbon renewable biodiesel fuels across the entire fleet. READ MORE
The new year brings new standard for diesel power in California’s trucking fleet (Diesel Technology Forum/Biobased Diesel Daily)
