British supermarket chain Sainsbury's to use biomethane in its trucks
Clean Air Power has announced that one of Britain's largest supermarket chains, Sainsbury's, has signed a contract with them to expand the use of biomethane in their trucks. Back in August 2007, Sainsbury's tried Clean Air's technology for the first time and in August 2008, it began to operate one of its Mercedes-Benz Axor Euro 3 vehicles fitted with Clean Air Power's Genesis' Dual-Fuel combustion technology. The system will now be used in five additional units. The system burns biomethane mixed with diesel fuel and is claimed to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent. The biomethane used by Sainsbury's is supplied by Gasrec from a local landfill. Pictured above is the grocer's first electric van.
[Source: Clean Air Power]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Carney 11:42AM (2/23/2009)
Again, a more practical approach is to use that waste to make methanol. Methanol can be made from any biomass without exception (today, no further research needed) and is an excellent, practical liquid fuel and can be used today in flex fuel vehicles that have a $100 modification enabling them to run on gasoline or any alcohol fuel.
For larger vehicles (ships, trains, large trucks) that need diesel fuel, you can react methanol with itself to form dimethyl ether (DME), an excellent clean burning diesel fuel. The modifications to run a vehicle on DME are no more onerous than to enable it to run on methane.
(Since methane is a gas, fuel tanks and dispensers must be air-tight. DME needs to be stored at pressure too, 5 atmospheres which isn't terribly onerous. Also your fuel tanks need to be a bit bigger to make up for the mileage.)
And DME burns CLEANLY, without the gouts of black smoke we're used to seeing from trucks, and with no sulfur or other pollutants either.
Best of all, DME can be used in turn not just as a fuel but also as the basis of an alternative renewable source for the majority of modern plastics, further helping free us all from petroleum. So a post petroleum economy is better achieved by using waste to make methanol and DME rather than methane.
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Stan Wellaway 11:54AM (2/23/2009)
Yep - that's one of several Smith Edison electric delivery vans supplied to Sainsbury's by Smith Electric vehicles.
The share price of Clean Air Power (LSE:CAP) has more than doubled in recent weeks on several contracts. I think one of the deals was with truckmaker Volvo.
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