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Sainsbury’s is running a delivery truck on a combination of diesel and bio-methane obtained from a landfill site. The vehicle will operate on the 500km round trip from the Sainsbury’s distribution centre at Emerald Park in Bristol to the supermarket’s new environmental store in Dartmouth.
The Mercedes-Benz Axor uses Clean Air Power’s “Genesis” Dual-Fuel™ combustion technology for heavy duty diesel engines.
Clean Air Power pioneered the move towards using natural gas (methane) as a fuel for heavy goods vehicles by developing patented technologies that enable an existing diesel engine to operate on a combination of diesel and methane, with minimal change required to the base engine. Up to 80% of diesel can be substituted by methane depending on the conditions and operating requirements. Diesel engine performance and efficiency are maintained while delivering significant fuel cost savings, along with a marked reduction in carbon emissions.
The Genesis Dial-Fuel™ system, available as an aftermarket product, was developed for the Daf CF85 and Mercedes-Benz Axor Euro 3 heavy trucks and is being developed further to be fitted to Euro 5 heavy trucks.
Alison Austin, environmental affairs manager at Sainsbury’s, says about the “Running on Rubbish” initiative: “This is a real first for how food is delivered in the UK, although the technology used is already used in Lille, France where city buses and refuse lorries run on bio-methane. Our aim is to now roll this out to our entire fleet so that we can make this technology work for all food deliveries across the UK, it makes complete environmental sense, and given escalating fuel costs, economic sense too. The beauty of it is it doesn’t use any fossil fuel like conventional fuel. This means the methane from rotting rubbish, which is damaging to our climate is put to positive use. We’re extremely proud to be the first UK supermarket to deliver food using these technologies in partnership with Clean Air Power, Gasrec and BOC”.
John Pettitt, Chief Executive of Clean Air Power said: “I am delighted that we have been able to support the Sainsbury’s initiative to become the first supermarket to use trucks that are converted to run on waste gas, bio-methane, generated from rubbish in landfills. We will continue to work with Sainsbury’s in support of its environmental initiatives. Bio-methane is a cleaner and cheaper fuel than diesel and with Genesis can deliver significant and practical fuel-cost savings to the operator”.
John Pettitt added: “A Genesis Dual-Fuel™ truck running on bio-methane produced from landfill gas could save up to 60 metric-tonnes of CO2 per year, compared with its diesel counterpart. If all the heavy goods vehicles based in the UK were converted to run on bio-methane there could be a total CO2 saving of up to 8.0 million metric-tonnes per year – that’s equivalent to a 4% reduction on the UK’s total CO2 emissions. A Government policy in the UK to support and encourage the use of bio-methane as a fuel of choice would benefit not only the road haulage industry and the economy but also the environment”.
Sainsbury’s environmental initiative is conducted in partnership with Clean Air Power, Gasrec and BOC.
