MOMENTUM - April 2024 - 25

SUSTAINABILITY
always too high. You had physical structures
that were very capital intensive, " he said.
Bennamann, Ltd., developed a " low-cost "
lagoon cover that captures fugitive methane
from livestock manure and converts it to
automotive-grade CNG and LNG (compressed
and liquefied natural gas) that the OEM claims
is a " better-than-zero-carbon " biofuel.
Methane has a global warming potential of
more than 80 times that of CO2 over a 20-year
period, according to the United Nations
Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
" Cows, which are often indicted as culprits in
global warming, can now be part of the solution, "
Zemenchik asserted. " One of the successes
we've seen so far [in this project] is that we can
now do this with less than a five-year payback in
a system that lasts up to 20 years. "
Speakers on the Smart Engineering for
Sustainability executive roundtable at COMVEC
addressed how their companies prioritize their
technology portfolios and decide which
projects to pursue. " We will touch everything
from powertrains to hydraulics, " Zemenchik
said. " It's incremental-it's a percent here, two
percent there. To decarbonize a fleet, we have
to do the deep dive into all of those
products. " He added that being open to
collaborative operations with " interesting,
non-traditional players " can help with gains,
instead of relying solely on in-house R&D.
Engineers need to be economists and
perform what-if scenarios for strategic
planning, according to Tim Frazier, VP of
research and technology at Cummins, Inc. " As
economists, you have to start thinking about
what are the minimum set of building blocks
that we need to assemble resilient solutions
for our customer base. It doesn't mean we're
going to take them all into production, but
we're building technology capability [for
when] the future becomes more clear. "
Rakesh Aneja, head of eMobility for
Daimler Truck North America (DTNA),
replied: " The engineer in me wants to do
everything. The reality is that [we have] finite
resources, both financial and, even more
importantly, people. " Regulations and
customer demand are two factors to
consider, as is balancing between near- and
long-term solutions. Hydrogen technology-
both fuel cells and combustion engines-will
play a complementary role, he said, but in the
U.S., it is at least a " couple years " behind the
battery-electric ecosystem.
A " trifecta " of conditions is required for
successful decarbonization, Aneja said: viable product solutions, total cost of
ownership parity-which is " not where it needs to be, " but is improving-and
dependable charging/refueling infrastructure, which is lagging.
" We have several battery-electric vehicles in production today. The initial
acquisition price of those vehicles is two to three times the cost of a
comparable diesel vehicle, " he said, noting that localization and
industrialization of battery production will help bring costs down.
Don Hillebrand, division director at Argonne National Laboratory,
referenced a recent meeting he attended in which several people from both
the utility and OEM sides said that the infrastructure is at least five years
behind where electric vehicles are. " And that's probably a true statement, " he
said. " It's building up very quickly, but infrastructure [still] moves slower than
the needs of our vehicle fleets. "
Aneja agreed, saying that some of the best-case scenarios for
infrastructure installation are 18-24 months. " In many cases, infrastructure
timelines are much longer-two or three years, even longer, " he said. " That
continues to be a challenge, and a lot needs to be done from a proactive
perspective to meet our emissions goals. "
But why wait? posited Cummins' Frazier. " Rather than waiting for a few
specific answers to be right in the future against all the limitations and
infrastructure challenges that are up against them, [we could] employ a
broader matrix of solutions to go further, faster, " he said. " If we leverage lowcarbon
fuels, liquid fuels, hydrogen, and renewable grids, we can take about
1.4 gigatons of CO2 out of the environment, ahead of waiting for [widespread]
grid infrastructure. That's the equivalent of taking every truck off the street for
three years. Not a bad goal. " n
By Ryan Gehm, Editor-in-Chief of Truck & Off-Highway Engineering.
This article was edited for MOMENTUM.
MOMENTUM
April 2024 25
European Parliament Research Service
https://bennamann.com/fugitive-methane/ https://www.sae.org/news/2023/09/lfp-battery-cell-production-for-electric-commercial-vehicles https://www.nxtbook.com/smg/sae/23TOHE10/
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