Clean Power Technologies Inc, developer of a heat recovery and hybrid power system to reduce vehicle emissions, has made a major investment at its Newhaven, United Kingdom, site with the installation of a Rolling Road simulator (or dynamometer). This equipment can simulate all road conditions a vehicle might encounter, allowing testing of Clean Power’s technology and accelerating it from a prototype to a commercially viable product.
Development of the heat recovery system termed CESAR (Clean Energy Storage And Recovery) has now reached the stage where vehicle installations are ready. Clean Power Technology has invested about $170,000 in a dynamometer manufactured by New Hampshire-based Dynomite. This equipment can accommodate a maximum-weight double-drive-axle truck, which turns the dynamometer rollers against a variable load created by applying electrical inertia. This allows simulation of all road conditions a truck may encounter in day-to-day operation.
Using field data collected in mid-2008 during a three-week exercise with Safeway operations in Canada, it will be possible, with appropriate instrumentation, to simulate fleet routes, develop and refine applications, and deliver maximum fuel benefits with minimum emissions. The equipment will allow, under fully controlled laboratory conditions, the speedy characterization of any vehicle exhaust temperature, flow, and constituency together with fuel usage.
Testing of the Rolling Road will be done on a US specification double-drive-axle, 12.8-liter Columbia Cab Freightliner truck, purchased by Clean Power at the beginning of 2009.
