FREIGHTLINER TO UNDERTAKE DUAL-FUEL TRIALS ON CLASS 66 FLEET
Published at 15:30 on Tuesday 10th August 2021
Tags: Class 66, Dual Fuel, Emissions, Freightliner.
Class 66/4 No. 66414 approaches Ruskington with the 11:22 Shepcote Lane (Tinsley Intermodal Terminal) to Felixstowe North intermodal working on 16th July. David Barnsdale
A bid for Government funding from the 'First of a Kind' competition to develop a dual-fuel solution for the Class 66 locomotive has been successful.
This will be the first time that the technology, which is widely used in the road industry, will be applied to the rail freight sector on such an important and widely used class of locomotive. Work commenced on 1st July and will take place over a nine-month period.
The key project partners are Freightliner, which operates over 113 Class-66s in the UK, and Clean Air Power, providers of innovative clean air solutions for freight. The project is also supported by Network Rail and the Rail Safety Standards Board (RSSB).
The aim of the work will be to investigate the ability to substitute diesel with both hydrogen and biogas on the Class 66 design, which hauls over 80% of freight on the UK rail network and, in doing so, reduce carbon emissions on one of the industry’s most challenging two-stroke power units. This will be achieved by retrofitting a locomotive with Clean Air Power’s precision injection technology, creating a engine that can run on a combination of diesel, biogas and hydrogen.
This sustainable solution will support a programme to decarbonise the diesel fleets of freight operators in a cost-efficient manner that does not require significant short-term investment and facilitates operational learning in support of a longer-term fleet replacement programme, potentially using 100% hydrogen fuel.
Exhaust emissions will be assessed in line with the latest RSSB guidance to understand both the baseline conditions and the impact of dual-fuel for both hydrogen and biogas. All work on locomotives, static testing and emission data collection will be carried out at Leeds Midland Road Depot.
