EPA Certifies CleanFUEL USA’ 6.0L Propane Engine System
06 April 2010
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has certified CleanFUEL USA’s propane engine system for the GM 6.0L engine.
CleanFUEL’s propane engine utilizes the Icom JTG Technology and System manufactured by Icom North America and offers the same horsepower, torque and performance as gasoline-powered engines, while producing 87% less hydrocarbons and 50% less toxicants than gasoline. CleanFUEL’s system performed 25% better than comparable gasoline and diesel engines tested against current EPA standards, also reporting zero in particulate matter emissions rate.
Collins Bus Corporation will display a propane Type A school bus test vehicle, featuring CleanFUEL’s new 6.0L LPI system at the Southeastern Convention & International Propane Expo in April. The engine is undergoing CARB testing and CleanFUEL expects the engine to be fully certified and commercially available by summer of 2010.
About 13 million cars and trucks worldwide are powered by propane today.
Percentages are mostly used to lie.
Modern engines already have very low releases of hydrocarbons and even a 90% reduction is not significant.
The same is true of toxicants.
Propane is a very clean fuel already and only the engine combustion makes it dirty.
Capstone turbines can burn it even cleaner and there is no combustion of engine oils from the cylinder walls to make it dirtier. They can even burn diesel cleaner than engines can burn propane without catalysts even. With catalysts, the exhaust from a Capstone turbine on a busy motorway is cleaner than the input air.
All new school buses should be hybrid buses, at least hydraulic hybrids, but they also can be plug in hybrid busses with long range nickel-sodium batteries.
The many types of lithium batteries pretending to be better for the market are eliminating the chances of a low cost mass produced battery in the near future.
The material costs of a nickel-sodium battery are very low and it has a very long life so that even after it is no longer suitable for motive power, it can be used for grid power stabilization service or UPS service. Large scale manufature of such batteries is being promoted now by General Electric. There is a full electric plug in school bus in operation for years now that uses such batteries.
The limited routes and service periods of school buses make them most suitable for plug in operation, but they should always have a small fuel powered range extender.
Almost any fuel can be burned in a large Wartsilla ship engine with 50% efficiency and if a Still cycle were added to recover the exhaust heat and other waste heat it might be able to do 60 or 65 percent or as good as fuel cells. This means that if electricity is generated by such engines, electric vehicles are the most efficient vehicles and the lowest CO2 producing vehicles. Combined cycle power plants can also approach such efficiencies.
But combined cycle power plants as well as stationary engines can also be cogeneration units that can use even much more of the heat in the fuel up to one-hundred percent. Actually cogeneration units can deliver 200% percent or more of the energy in a fuel as heat energy to a building under favorable conditions but a minimum of 100%.
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 06 April 2010 at 04:49 PM