The new LNG engine from Scania works only with natural gas and uses the Otto principle, with spark plugs and complete combustion.

Scania has presented its new engine powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) which, with a cubic capacity of 12.7 liters and an architecture of six cylinders in line, yields a power of 410 horses (at 1,900 rpm) and a maximum torque of 2,000 rpm (between 1,100 and 1,400 rpm). Mounted on a tractor it offers a range of 1,100 km, a figure that rises up to 1,600 km if double LNG tanks are mounted on a rigid vehicle.

Dubbed OC13, the new propeller developed by the Swedish manufacturer is able to offer CO2 reductions of between 15 and 90%, according to the information provided by the company. Henrik Eng, director of the urban truck segment of Scania, explains that “in Spain and Italy there is a great demand for solutions that offer all the operational economic advantages of gas and no disadvantages”.

The new LNG engine from Scania works only with natural gas and uses the Otto principle, with spark plugs and complete combustion. With a maintenance interval set at 45,000 kilometers, it is a stoichiometric combustion engine, that is, complete combustion of both fuel and oxygen. Thus, combustion is started with the help of spark plugs, just like in a gasoline engine, with which the preliminary mixing of the fuel is done before its entry into the cylinders.

“An important goal for us in the development work has been to ensure the best possible driving ease so that performance and features match what is expected from a modern diesel engine,” explains Folke Fritzson, senior engineer at Scania I + D and part of the team that develops Scania’s gas engines.

The storage of natural gas in the vehicle that incorporates this new engine can be done through deposits of both LNG and CNG (compressed natural gas), with much greater autonomy of operation in the first case, up to 1,100 km compared to 500 km in the case of CNG.

In relation to the maintenance intervals, the Scandinavian constructor details the fact that gas engines that work with the Otto principle require shorter maintenance intervals than diesel engines. However, Scania engineers have installed a series of measures to help extend these maintenance intervals, the limits of which, for the time being, set the life cycle of the spark plugs, which is 45,000 km, a figure clearly higher than the 30,000 km from the previous generations of gas engines. To comply with the emission regulations, it assembles an EGR system and a three-way catalytic converter.

08/11/2017 TODO TRANSPORTE