Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/116194
InBrief • Wabash National Corp. is acquiring certain assets of the tank and trailer business of Beall Corp., a Portland, Ore.-based manufacturer of aluminum tank trailers and related equipment, for $15 million. Westport details revolutionary LNG fuel system Confidence, not caution, may anchor adoption of natural gas By JACK ROBERTS • Navistar is adding selective catalytic reduction exhaust aftertreatment to its International WorkStar vocational models. The trucks will begin rolling out in May and will have Navistar's 13-liter MaxxForce engine equipped with Cummins' SCR system. • Mack Trucks' Purebred Overhaul program offers extended warranty coverage of up to three years or 350,000 miles for the company's E7 engines. • Meritor Wabco was named the standard-position steer-axle service brake-chamber supplier for all Daimler Trucks North America air-brake vehicles. Also, Meritor Wabco's Roll Stability Control System now is available on Western Star 4700, 4800 and 4900 models equipped with Meritor's anti-lock braking system. • Kenworth Truck Co. customers in the United States may receive a 3-year/300,000-mile basic vehicle extended warranty through March 31, 2014, by choosing Paccar Financial to finance 2013 purchases of new Kenworth Class 8 trucks with a standard highway warranty. • Xtra Lease has ordered more than 2,000 new trailers for 2013, including dry vans, reefers, flatbeds, chassis and liftgate vans. Dry vans and reefers will have aerodynamic side skirts, low rolling-resistance tires and trailer-tracking units. • Thermo King is offering a rebate of up to $500 through June 30 for customers who buy a new SB or Precedent trailer unit and add the Thermo Guard Assurance maintenance program and TracKing Telematics system. • Meritor marked production of its 10 millionth North American-made trailer axle at its manufacturing facility in Frankfort, Ky. 30 A t an exclusive briefing for CCJ and Westport's new LNG fuel system is powered by a DEF-sized hydraulic Overdrive at Westport Innovation's power pack mounted on the vehicle corporate headquarters in Vancouver, frame rail. B.C., engineers gave an overview of the company's new fuel system for sparkignited Cummins-Westport liquefied natural gas engines. The system will debut soon on the new 11.9-liter ISX12G NG engine and could prove to be a vital stepping stone in the trucking industry's cautious adoption of natural gas as a fuel for commercial truck applications. All LNG starts out extremely cold, but in previous Cummins-Westport engines, the fuel needed to be warmed before it could be used efficiently due to the preexisting spark-ignited engine design. Also, the equipment required to warm and support saturated LNG is an expensive capital investment. Now, fleets not wishing to invest in the extra warming equipment can save their money. Westport's new fuel system will standardize LNG because it will accept and use either warmed (saturated) LNG or the much colder (unsaturated) version of the fuel delivered to the station in its transport state, says Gage Garner, market development manager. Saturated LNG refers to liquid fuel that is the same temperature as fuel vapor present in the tank. As LNG sits, it warms and expands, and vapor and tank pressures increase, taking up additional tank space until pressures reach a venting threshold and are released into the air – in which case, Garner says, you essentially are throwing money away in the form of unburned fuel. Since cold LNG is denser than warm LNG, a tank of cold fuel can hold up to 10 percent more fuel than a warm tank, resulting in an increase in vehicle range. Using cold LNG also can double the hold time of LNG tanks. "Based on our testing, we can increase the hold time from 5 days to 10 days," Garner says. The key, he says, is a new variable-temperature fuel pump located in the LNG tank. The pump is powered by a diesel exhaust fluid tank-sized hydraulic pack and reacts to the tank's internal pressure. If the tank's fuel is warm with high vapor pressures, the pump provides little or no flow to the engine; in most cases, warm LNG's natural pressure is sufficient to maintain fuel pressure. If the pump senses cold LNG in the tank, it automatically compensates for the lack of natural pressure and pumps fuel to the engine. A regulator on the engine end of the system ensures constant fuel pressure into the combustion chambers. The new fuel system will be retrofittable onto previous-generation CumminsWestport NG engines and soon could migrate up to the ISX15G. Garner says fleets will see immediate benefits from the new fuel system, including the ability to use both warm and cold LNG; lengthened hold times of up to 10 days for a tank of fuel without venting; and increased vehicle ranges, with the possibility of going from two fuel tanks to one for some regional and urban applications. commercial carrier journal | march 2013 0313_Equipdept_Jack.indd 30 2/20/13 1:10 PM