DC PowerSystems Develops Compressor With 65% Fuel Savings

With diesel costing more than a pound a litre, DC PowerSystems claims to have designed mobile tyre van compressor that offers a potential fuel of £10,000 over the course of the van’s life. The figure is based on the typical service life of a mobile truck tyre fitting van. Want to know how this works? The trick is that the DC PowerSystems compressor only needs the host vehicle engine to run at 800 rpm rather than the 1700 rpm typical PTO driven systems require. As a consequence, the reduction in fuel usage equates directly to a reduction in carbon emissions.

Working with the Power Train and Vehicle Research Centre at Bath University, DC PowerSystems aimed to establish the level of fuel savings that could be achieved. A simple test enabled the fuel consumption of the host vehicle to be determined while the compressor system was running on load, by reading the data directly from the vehicle’s ECU.

An independent company was commissioned to test each type of system fitted to the same make of vehicle with the same engine specification. A set of baseline data was taken for each vehicle to eliminate any differences in the specific fuel consumption.

As far as reduced emissions are concerned, over the typical four year life each vehicle fitted with a DC PowerSystems compressor will produce over 25 tonnes less CO2 than a comparable system. Based on the estimated number of mobile tyre fitting vehicles currently operating in the UK, this would appear to reduce carbon emission from these vehicles 31 billion tonnes a year.

DC PowerSystems reports that it will continue to work with University of Bath to further this research.