Gas Power UK Ltd are one of the leading
installers of advanced LPG systems for commercial diesel engines.
Unlike conventional LPG conversions for
petrol engines, a Bi-Fuel Diesel/LPG conversion enables both diesel fuel and LPG
to be injected at the same time, reaping many benefits and overcoming all of the
early problems that such conversions suffered from.
Our conversions utilizes advanced electronic
control systems to make the engine run more efficiently, increasing the
temperatures inside the combustion chamber and ensuring that more of the diesel
fuel is burnt (typically, commercial diesel engines only utilizes 82% of the fuel
injected).
Not only does this benefit the fuel
efficiency of the engine but also reduces the production of soot and un-burnt
hydrocarbons. It does not increase engine horsepower but does improve the torque
curve - a real benefit in commercial operations.
Gas Power UK is proud to announce that they
have been contracted to install conversions for a number of local company fleets
and are able to talk to you today about your own Bi-Fuel Diesel/LPG Conversions.
A
short History of diesel enrichment and why so many failed
Mr
Hubart an eminent mathematician, had predicted that inexpensive crude oil
& fuel would cease by the year 2005, so to prolong the life of the oil
fields, experiments were started to reduce our dependency on crude oil. In the
late 1980’s experiments were being run to clean up the emissions produced by
all the common fuels. Catalytic converters to reduce CO, and CO2, on petrol
engines, and additives to diesel to reduce soot and particulates.
Experiments
during this time by engineers had differing results as they tried combinations
on fuels to propel vehicles, one of these was LPG and diesel, others were CNG
and vegetable oil, Petrol and diesel, Alco-fuels and synthetic fuels. It was
reported that a static single stroke diesel engine could run on 10% diesel and
90% LPG but when this was repeated in a road vehicle, the engine suffered from
star-fire as the fuel burned trough the top of the piston, and the engine was
destroyed, after that 2 Cummings engines running on 50-50 Diesel / LPG also
suffered from Star-Fire, when the mid 1990’s arrived most systems were using
10-30% LPG 90-70% diesel, delivered to an engine via a mixer unit and allowing
the Nock sensor a device that senses over fuelling that is fitted to the
engine and thereby reduce the diesel (lots of engines died of star fire at low
revs)
The
problem was the mix LPG / Diesel was too much at low rpm so the maximum
savings of these early systems would be as low as 5-10% fuel cost savings. We
have now moved away from that type of system and our competitors who are still
using the Nock sensor to trim back diesel, we on the other hand are
controlling both fuels simultaneously which means that we have fuel cost
savings across the whole of the RPM range not just when the vehicle is driving
against the fuel limiter. We are reducing pollution and improving MPG and can
prove that the engine life will be extended just like the petrol engines that
run on LPG.
In simple
terms why do we get a saving from combining the
two fuels?
If we look at the chemical makeup of
fuels a two patterns emerge. The bigger the molecule the slower the burn &
liquids and gases burn in different ways.
Most of the fuels we are burning are known as a
hydrocarbon, which means they are made up of hydrogen and carbon molecules of
differing lengths.
The hydrocarbon family start with methane and
finish with heavy oils
