In 2016, North American Repower became certified by the California Air Resources Board. They shared their rigorous experience, challenges and the benefits of certification with 国产麻豆.
North American Repower is a privately held cleantech corporation that specializes in natural gas engine conversion and consults, designs, manufactures and distributes products for the natural gas engine market. With a goal to minimize their carbon footprint, North American Repower is managed by a select group of forward thinking investors concerned about the future. The founders are Dr. John Reed, an anesthesiologist who came out of the racing world, and Pete Petersen, an aeronautical engineer, who has been involved in fueling systems for natural gas for 25 years. Evan Williams, a major owner and participant in the management of the company, came out of the waste industry, working with Cambrian Energy, which has been involved in energy development on landfills for 35 years. Rich Oppmann is a veteran of the auto industry who has worked in commercial vehicle development in Detroit and with global OEMs. As a group they believe that efficient and intelligent use of existing resources is the most immediate and effective path to preserving the environment, transitioning to alternative fuels and revitalizing the economy. In 2014, North American Repower decided to go through the vigorous process of becoming certified by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Recently becoming CARB-certified for the first natural gas conversion for retrofit application of an existing diesel engine (in-use engine), they share their experiences with 国产麻豆 and talk about the challenges of the process and what CARB-certification means to the industry.听
Why did you make the decision to go through the CARB certification process?
Evan Williams: A lot of our decision to go through CARB certification was driven by the market. The development of North American Repower鈥檚 CNG engine and its fueling system went through a process because of the presence of Rich Oppmann and all of his colleagues down at GM. They told us, if you sell a vehicle, all of its problems have to be solved and it has to be reliable because this is how businesses are making their living. So, we went through more than two years of development. We actually had EPA compliance for this engine two years ago, but we made a corporate decision not to go to the marketplace until we had a flawless development process and a flawless vehicle.
We were also aware that there were rules going into effect that were going to phase out these older diesels from California. Other states offer grants to support the incremental cost of converting to an alternative vehicle.听 There are some states that offer tax credits. There are a large number of states that offer nothing whatsoever.听 So, the only way in those states that you could have justified switching to an alternative fuel was on the fuel savings and that had disappeared.听 We made a corporate decision to focus on the states that had these types of incentives. More importantly, we knew that California had another major driver, which was another 25,000 medium and heavy-duty trucks in the state that California views as being the higher polluters for the transport industry; these trucks that had to stop operating as diesels unless they converted to CNG or another alternative fuel.
What is the difference between the EPA process and the one for CARB certification?
Williams: Unlike the EPA, which is just an emissions test, CARB also wants to know what is going to happen two, three, four years from now in terms of deterioration as far as what the emissions look like, so there is a durability aspect to the CARB process that you have to go through to satisfy them. The CARB aftermarket rules have been on the books for 17 years and no one had ever gone through the certification process because of all of the difficulties that are involved. We have only had our CARB certification about a month and this was after more than a two-year process.
What does the process involve?
Rich Oppmann: The CARB process for aftermarket conversion is virtually the same process as CARB certification for a brand new vehicle. It involves considerations for deterioration of emissions, warranty items, durability of the engine and verification that it meets the fundamental emissions, so it is a very rigorous process鈥攆ar more than EPA where you just demonstrate the emissions level that you can achieve. CARB is quite a different animal. We recognized, having dealt with fleets and heavy-duty vehicles, that fleets use their vehicles as a means to their business. They are not out there buying new technology as it comes. So a responsibility that we have is to not only recognize that technology and clean air are very important, but we also have to realize that we must bring to the fleet owner a package that is financially attractive with quality and reliability鈥攊t has to be a win-win for everyone involved.
We had a consulting firm that does nothing but CARB certifications that we went through. There were a lot of steps we had to take from an engineering perspective to meet the fairly stringent requirements that CARB has. We had to go through a testing of our engine, which had to be at a dynamometer facility that was approved by CARB. As part of the application, we showed them all of our engine designs and the emission results that we obtained. They went through and looked at every part. We did have to make some modifications to our regulators and other parts; however, the last one, which took us some time to do, was that they wanted to make sure that the CARB label that went on the engine had a certain adhesive to make sure that it was going to stay on鈥攖hat was the level of detail that we had to go through to get the certification. Because no one had ever been through this process, we were the guinea pigs and there were a lot of questions that were raised.
Did you run into any challenges during the process?
Williams: I would say that the biggest challenge to this was the fact that we were the first and that we were in new territory; this was something that CARB hadn鈥檛 been through.听 They didn鈥檛 know quite how to do it. Others had never been through this process because it didn鈥檛 make economic sense for them to do it at the time. It was a learning curve for us and the CARB staff; there wasn鈥檛 any precedent that we could look to in order to say this is what to expect. We knew we met the technical requirements but there were a lot of things that came up during the review process that weren鈥檛 in the works that we had to comply with (stickers, labels, modifying parts including making sure the regulator couldn鈥檛 be tampered with so people couldn鈥檛 change the calibration and change the emissions profiles, etc.). There were a lot of these types of things that came up that you couldn鈥檛 read between the lines of what the regulations said because a lot of it was how the CARB staff was going to interpret it. It was a challenge and it took a lot longer than expected.
As we were going through the CARB process, an emissions debacle by a major OEM surfaced, so we were delayed in getting our CARB certification because CARB wanted to make sure that there could be no tampering with our regulators. This OEM had played some games with their calibration and some of the software on emissions so they were actually emitting far more than they were claiming once it got into the field. We actually had to engineer some additional safeguards into the equipment and deliver them up to CARB so we could get it inspected and approved by their technical staff鈥攖his had to happen before CARB gave us the certification. We were pioneering this aftermarket CARB certification regulations process and we had this extra burden put on us because we were told that CARB wanted to make sure that there would be nothing in our system that would allow a user to modify it and change the emissions profiles.
Although it was enacted 17 years ago, one of the things that changed relatively recently was that with new vehicles, CARB requires the OEMs to actually take some vehicles out of service once they have sold them under CARB certification and submit them to retesting. As one of the original aftermarket rules, it was incredibly burdensome. Rather than go through this aftermarket re-testing of the vehicles, CARB applied a deterioration factor to the emissions that we tested at, which was 1.3; they said okay we鈥檙e going to assume that even after we apply this deterioration factor, you will still be below our thresholds. You鈥檒l get your certification, and you don鈥檛 have to go take vehicles out of service after they鈥檝e been sold. So we actually have a much lower emitting vehicle than what our certification says. One of the things we can do after an in-use engine attains 185,000 miles is remove it from the vehicle, place it into a 1065 compliant Engine Emissions Test Cell and document that we still maintain like new emissions with little or no degradation.
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What are the benefits of CARB certification?
Williams: Fortunately, you only have to go through the process once because of the fact that CARB applied this deterioration factor; we don鈥檛 have to re-certify every year like a new vehicle. We can sell these now and there are a quarter million of these engines operating in the field; there are 24,000 of these engines operating in the state of California and this technology is going to be the salvation for these vehicles operating in the state of California because older vehicles under the diesel and bus regulations have to start leaving the state if the engines remain diesel. If they have put a DPF on by 2014, it does give them an extension to 2020. This is interesting because it means that California will be exporting these higher polluting vehicles to another state unless the vehicle does one of two things: 1) it can replace that vehicle with a 2010 compliant diesel engine (and there are none) or 2) it can convert to an alternative fuel that meets CARB certification, and we have the only engine that meets that qualification. From an environmental perspective, what we are going to do is instead of exporting pollution from California, we are going to repurpose these vehicles by taking out the old diesel engines and replacing them with a start-of-life re-manufactured engine using North American Repower fueling technology. Getting CARB certification gives us the ability to go ahead and change out fleets and, more importantly, not export them or retire them, but to repurpose that vehicle so it can operate on an alternative fuel and get another 8 to 10 years of life.
What is the significance of a CARB certification?
Oppmann: The significance of CARB certification for the aftermarket conversions are really a game changer for fleets. Previous to this, the Truck & Bus Regulations for the state of California gave two options鈥攜ou can retire the truck after a certain scheduled year or convert to a 2010 engine, which is neither available or compatible. Now, the fleets do have the option to keep their vehicles, convert them to CNG, have a clean burning fuel and potentially use all the benefits of CNG which could include long-term pricing advantages, traditionally lowering fuel cost than diesel and keeping the equipment just as they know it. We found that when a lot of fleets hit the magic cutoff date, they are having to go out and lease trucks, so they are paying money to go out to lease trucks just so they can comply with the truck and bus regulation in California. Now, a new option exists for fleets that own DT-466 engines, and there are 10s of 1,000s of these engines in CA.
Other people have tried to go through aftermarket conversion; there are kits that companies will sell to installers and, in turn, they are given a set of instructions that you can use to make these modifications鈥攑ut this kit on and it will be natural gas. They work somewhat but they don鈥檛 have the reliability and they have never dealt with some of the inherent flaws in the DT-466 engine operating as a diesel when it is converted to CNG鈥攖hose problems don鈥檛 exist in diesel applications.
Williams: By installing one of our dedicated natural gas engines in the vehicle, it puts them in an exempt status with the California Air Resources Board. They will no longer have to deal with CARB again for the life of the vehicle.
Oppmann: We don鈥檛 have a DPF or a catalyst on it like other CNG systems and conversions and we don鈥檛 use exhaust gas recirculation, so a lot of the elements that can create maintenance issues for diesels don鈥檛 exist in our CNG engine鈥攊t is very low maintenance.
Any advice for those who may be planning on going through the CARB certification process in the future?
Williams: Understand that CARB is understaffed for the amount of work the California regulations generate. Realize every engine sold in California鈥攆rom weed whackers to Mega Watt Turbine generators鈥攎ust be certified every model year. New fossil fueled engines have well-established pathways to certification, but Clean Alternative Fuel conversion certification for heavy-duty engines has only happened once so far, so expect some delays if you want to follow in our footsteps.
What are some final thoughts on your experience?
Williams: I give a lot of credit to Dr. Reed, Pete Petersen, Rich Oppmann and all the technical people on our Technical Advisory Board that brought 250 years of automotive engineering experience to the development of this dedicated CNG engine. People bought into it because they thought it was the right thing to do, and they also bought into how it is going to be delivered into the marketplace. It is not just an engine; it is an entire process of converting a vehicle and delivering the natural gas fueling solution. We really vet the vehicle on an engineering basis to make sure that it can fit tanks and that it works; we are not trying to force something onto a vehicle that won鈥檛 last. We want to have customers have a very good experience with this vehicle. We think we are heading down the right path; we are trailblazers. | WA
For more information, contact Richard Oppmann at North American Repower (949) 667-2673 or [email protected].
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