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ComVec: Adgero highlights hybrid opportunities

Adgero chief says Australia represents a hybrid technology opportunity

 

Speaking at the ComVec 2016 engineering conference in Melbourne this week, Adgero president Mack Murray says there is a huge potential for hybrid solutions in the country.

In Australia to detail his company’s newly-developed Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), the French technology firm head says the sheer distances covered and large emissions exhausted by the Australian transport industry make it an ideal location for environmental and financial gains.

“The incredibly varied nature of Australia’s roads represents a huge potential for energy-saving for the road haulage industry through hybridisation,” Murray says.

“Take Australia’s busiest trucking route, the Hume Highway, for example: crossing the Great Dividing Range means constant braking and accelerating for truck drivers – this is all potential energy that could be harnessed to save fuel and emissions.”

Adgero’s UltraBoost solution, first unveiled in April and currently undergoing trials, is making such promises.

According to the company, the technology “could help Australian road transport operators cut fuel consumption by up to 25 per cent” and subsequently reduce a vehicle’s emissions.

The system includes an electronically driven axle fitted to a semi-trailer or rigid body, a bank of ultracapacitors, and software that controls regenerative braking and acceleration boost automatically.

Heat expelled during braking is turned into electricity by the KERS system and then used to refill the ultracapacitors.

The electricity is then delivered to the axle when extra power is required.

“Trucks travelling along busy routes between capitals or in urban areas would benefit most by hybridisation, but our UltraBoost system could also reduce fuel consumption for road trains, mining trucks or even port crane vehicles such as straddle carriers,” Murray says.

“Trucks account for the Australian transport sector’s second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after cars and more than 95 per cent of road freight is carried by heavy vehicles such as semi-trailers, B-doubles and rigid trucks – most of which can be retrofitted with a Kinetic Energy Recovery System.”

The technology is being trialled in the UK presently by a logistics company across a number of delivery routes.

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