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Volvo Trucks May Have Created Historic Moment In Alternative Fuel Vehicles

This could be a piv­otal moment in the his­tory of alter­na­tive fuel vehi­cles, up there with the Toy­ota Prius com­ing to Amer­ica in 2000, and the Nis­san Leaf and Chevro­let Volt being launched in late 2010. Volvo Trucks is com­mer­cial­iz­ing dimethyl ether (DME)-powered heavy duty trucks in North Amer­ica, and here are a few things you should know about it:

1. It has the per­for­mance qual­i­ties and energy effi­ciency of diesel but can lower CO2 emis­sions by 95%. Nat­ural gas reduces green­house gas/C02 emis­sions 20% to 25% com­pared to diesel.
2. It pro­duces no soot, which is a com­monly ref­er­enced down­side of diesel (includ­ing clean diesel). Because it pro­duces no soot, no diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter is nec­es­sary.
3. The fuel comes from a vari­ety of domes­tic, sus­tain­able sources such as bio­gas from food and ani­mal waste, waster­wa­ter treat­ment facil­i­ties, and land­fills.
4. The fuel can also be tapped and con­verted from North America’s vast sup­ply of nat­ural gas. This would address the dis­tri­b­u­tion, stor­age, and fuel­ing chal­lenges faced by nat­ural gas vehi­cles – deal­ing with what NGVs face and also con­tribut­ing to solu­tions, along with ben­e­fit­ing from a domes­tic fuel source that doesn’t have to be imported from a hos­tile over­seas mar­ket.
5. The fuel is stored in lighter, sim­pler fuel tanks and lower psi sys­tems than what’s needed for LNG and CNG sys­tems. It’s sim­i­lar to propane-powered vehi­cles in that regard.
6. DME has been on the mar­ket for years as an aerosol pro­pel­lant in cos­met­ics and other house­hold prod­ucts. It’s a clean, non-toxic fuel.

It’s part of Volvo’s “Blue Power” alter­na­tive fuel strat­egy, and has been through ongo­ing US cus­tomer field test­ing of trucks pow­ered by DME. It was demon­strated to an audi­ence after being announced recently in Sacra­mento at the Cal­i­for­nia state capi­tol build­ing. The DME tech­nol­ogy will be avail­able in a Volvo D13 engine, the top-selling heavy-duty engine in the world.

Volvo Trucks is still com­mit­ted to CNG and LNG offer­ings as well – its lineup already includes CNG-powered Volvo VNM and VNL model day­cabs. The com­pany is also pro­duc­ing its own pro­pri­etary LNG engine in VNL day­cabs and sleep­ers next year.

Blue Power was started in 2007 in Brus­sels when Volvo show­cased seven com­mer­cial vehi­cles pow­ered by seven dif­fer­ent CO2-neutral fuels, one of which was DME. More recently, Oberon Fuels has devel­oped small-scale pro­duc­tion units that can cost-effectively con­vert bio­gas and nat­ural gas into DME. The first of Oberon’s inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­tion units will go online in June in California’s Impe­r­ial Val­ley region.

Will DME fuel and tech­nol­ogy makes its way to light-duty pas­sen­ger vehi­cles? There’s no word on that yet. AB Volvo split between cars and heavy trucks in 1999 when Ford bought the car divi­sion. Chi­nese com­pany Geely Auto­mo­bile bought Volvo Cars from Ford in 2010. Per­haps Volvo Trucks and Volvo/Geely could work together on it.

http://automotivedigest.com/2013/06/volvo-trucks-may-have-created-historic-moment-in-alternative-fuel-vehicles/