Clean Air Power
Leyland, Lancashire, United Kingdom

• Offer customers a leading-edge design and development solution combined with a full supply chain management and deliveryservice.
• Focus on the competitive advantage of compression-ignited natural gas systems across a range of markets, both on-highway and off-highway where the potential fuel savings are significant, to grow stable revenues.
• Secure funded-development programs with OEMs and Tier 1 manufacturers to reduce development costs and sales volume risks.

Clean Air Power has a reputation for making innovative, durable and reliable components. And for selling them to the world’s most discerning clients for the most demanding commercial vehicle applications.

They are the cornerstone for helping achieve real reductions in emissions from road transport, a concern for business, governments and wider society. These includes greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide, a by-product of burning fossil fuels. But also air quality emissions, such as carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and diesel particulates (or soot).

Hundreds of customers rely on Clean Air Power every day for their components to support natural gas engine systems. These are integral to delivering low-emission gasoline, natural gas and diesel vehicles, trucks and LCVs that meet ever-tighter worldwide emission targets. And for cutting operator costs.

Clean Air Power products include hydraulic valves, gas injectors, shut off valves, coalescing filters: natural gas components and filtration components.

How Dual-Fuel™ Works

The Diesel Engine
Diesel engines work on the principle of compression ignition. Air is first drawn into a cylinder where it is highly compressed – far more so than in a petrol/gasoline engine. It is this high ‘compression ratio’ that makes a diesel engine more efficient than its counterpart. 
Diesel fuel is injected into the cylinder at high pressure, near the point of maximum compression. The combination of diesel fuel, and heated compressed air within the cylinder, results in ignition. 
The fuel and air combination burns rapidly, increasing pressure and temperature, driving the piston back down the cylinder with great force. This sudden release of energy generates the power of the engine.

What changes?
With Dual Fuel™ there is no change to the basic architecture of the diesel engine – or to the principle of diesel combustion. The engine itself is virtually unaltered, but for the addition of a gas injection system and an externally-fitted ECU. The Dual-Fuel™ in-cylinder temperatures and pressures remain within the limits of pure diesel operation, so the converted engine operates within the parameters of the original engine.

In a Dual-Fuel™ engine, however, the diesel fuel injector works like a liquid spark plug. Highly pressurized, it ignites a mixture of compressed gas and air in the cylinder, with natural gas comprising as much as 90 percent of the overall fuel mix .

Tests have shown that the addition of Dual-Fuel™ components do not affect the base engine’s robustness or durability. And a quick and economic return to pure diesel at the end of ownership, ensures that residual values are not compromised.

Gas Injection System

• Electronically controlled gas injectors installed in modified air inlet manifold

Dual-Fuel™ Control System

The new generation Dual-Fuel™ ECU – the Hawk™ – was developed in 2007 and is now being applied to both Genesis and C-15 interfaced systems from Clean Air Power. The Hawk™ is a powerful and robust controller, with ECU hardware supplied by Mototron Inc with industry-standard software, engineered by Ricardo.

The Hawk™ meets or exceeds OEM standards for robustness and operation, providing the ideal platform for heavy-duty, stand-alone, retro-fit systems or OEM-interfaced installation.

The development of the Hawk™ is illustrated in the Technical paper “Development Of The Hawk™ Advanced Dual-Fuel™ Engine Management System to Enable the Use of Natural Gas in Today’s Heavy-Duty Vehicles” presented at the IANGV 2008 conference in Rio De Janeiro.

Natural Gas Injection

Clean Air Dual-Fuel™ injectors are controlled by pulse-width modulated signals from the ECU. The signals are based on manifold pressure, charge air temperature, gas pressure, gas temperature, and fuel mapping, providing the best combination of high efficiency and low emissions.

All Dual-Fuel™ engines will run with either Compressed Natural Gas or Liquefied Natural Gas. Super-cooled LNG requires vacuum-insulated, low-pressure fuel tanks which take up less space than compressed CNG gas tanks. CNG tanks are three times larger than LNG tanks for the same basic fuel capacity.

Either fuel delivers the same engine performance.

CNG and LNG

The ability to use both forms of natural gas is essential for commercial success in an ever-growing and changing market. As a complement to the development of Dual-Fuel™ technology, Clean Air Power pioneered vehicle systems for storing and delivering CNG and LNG.