- Event: Launch of first bus with diesel power minus the
pollution - Date: April 21, 1997
- Time: 9:30 a.m.
- Place: TELEcentre, University Services Building, 2329
West Mall - Parking: Available in the West Parkade on West Mall.
Enter at Gate 6 off Southwest Marine Drive
The 1981 GMC bus parked behind UBC’s Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
looks, sounds and performs like a regular diesel-powered transit
coach with three notable exceptions.
Powered by a unique natural gas injection system, the vehicle emits
half the pollutants and costs close to half as much to fuel as its
gas-guzzling counterparts. And then there’s the paint job.
“She’s a beauty,” remarks Brad Douville, admiring the blue sky
side panels dotted with clouds.
Douville, 27, is chief engineer for Westport Innovations Inc.,
a UBC spin-off company with big plans for its revolutionary technology
called High Pressure Direct (HPD) Injection. He believes the research
breakthrough could save the diesel engine from extinction.
Prof. Philip Hill, with UBC’s Dept. of Mechanical Engineering,
has been developing HPD Injection technology with Douville and others
in his lab since 1989. Six of his former students have moved into
full-time jobs at Westport headquarters located a five-minute walk
away from Hill’s lab.
“I didn’t foresee this arrangement when I started but I certainly
have no complaints,” says Hill, whose research was initially funded
by the B.C. Science Council. “The teamwork to date has been fantastic.”
Hill’s technology, licensed to Westport in 1994 through UBC’s Industry
Liaison Office, is not the first attempt to adapt a diesel engine
to natural gas. B.C. Transit has 25 natural gas buses.
What sets the HPD system apart from other natural gas conversions
is that it drastically reduces harmful emissions of both nitrogen
oxides and tiny soot particulates without compromising a diesel
engine’s efficiency or performance.
“Diesel engines are all around us and a vital part of the global
economy,” says Westport President David Demers. “This technology
provides an immediate solution to the problem of diesel emissions
while keeping the advantages diesel engines offer.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed an agreement
with manufacturers in 1995 to cut emissions from heavy-duty trucks
and buses in half starting in 2004. Demers says the Westport technology
gives manufacturers a low-cost method of meeting terms of the agreement
by bringing emissions of nitrogen oxide and particulates below 1998
EPA levels.
The conversion to HPD injection is done without expensive modifications
to the engine and power train. The retrofit requires replacing the
diesel fuel injectors, adding a natural gas storage tank and a patented
on-board gas compressor which maintains high-injection pressure
as tanks empty.
The secrets to Hill’s research breakthrough are the compressor
and UBC-designed injectors which have two tiny ports, one for natural
gas and another for a jet of diesel fuel to ignite the gas as it
is injected into the cylinder.
Diesel fuel in standard engines automatically ignites when it comes
in contact with hot, compressed air. Natural gas doesn’t auto-ignite
so the HPD injectors supply supplementary diesel fuel assistance.
Other natural gas conversions, such as those in use by B.C. Transit,
require a throttle and spark ignition which sharply reduces fuel
economy.
Douville will be behind the wheel when Westport rolls out its first
demonstration vehicle this month, a 16-year-old bus from the Los
Angeles County Metro Transit Authority.
The bus’s Detroit Diesel engine, retrofitted with the HPD injection
system, will undergo tests for two months in and around UBC before
being shipped to California for formal trials. The demonstration
trials will be funded by the National Research Council of Canada
and the California Air Resources Board’s Innovative Clean Air Technology
Program.
Westport plans to have close to a dozen demonstration vehicles
in use by the end of the year in three locations: the Antelope Valley
School District in southern California, Sonoma County and the University
of California, Berkeley.
Demers says the $1-billion transit system in North America represents
about one-twentieth of the heavy-duty diesel market which includes
mining and forestry equipment, locomotives, ships, diesel trucks,
tractors and power generators. He says transit systems are being
used to demonstrate the technology’s reliability and worth economically
and environmentally.
“The primary objective for our business is to develop this technology
as the leading approach for clean air diesel engines in partnership
with original equipment manufacturers,” says Demers.
Westport is currently presenting the technology to the Detroit
Diesel Corporation, Cummins and Caterpillar in North America and
other manufacturers around the world.
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