Municipals could gain from natural gas engine
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• MAN has launched a mass-produced lean-burn natural gas engine for its articulated city buses which could be adapted for use in municipal vehicles.
The 12-litre, 306hp (228kW) four-stroke gas engine is one of a number of alternative-fuel concepts the firm will be spotlighting at the Hanover IAA truck show in September. It is initially designed to run on compressed natural gas (CNG) using spark ignition and the lean-burn principle featuring a Bosch electronic mixing system.
The gas engine has a compression ratio of 11:1; it features a wastegate-equipped turbocharger and charge-cooler.
But MAN is not just looking at natural gas: sponsored by the State of Bavaria, it has built a pair of super-clean hydrogenpowered articulated buses which will go into service at Munich Airport this autumn.
They will be powered by another spark-ignition variant of the 12-litre 2866 engine, this time rated at 188hp (140kW). The hydrogen is stored at high pressure (250bar) in carbonwound aluminium tanks mounted on the roof. Their total capacity of 2,5801it will give a range of around 150km, albeit at a maximum of 30krnill on flat ground.
The next logical step would be electrical power supplied by a fuel cell which has the potential for producing hardly any pollutants (akt 9-15 July 1998). MAN is looking into this solution for bus applications, and has decided that its future electric or hybrid buses will use the same "skeleton" as conventional vehicles, with a central electric motor rather than a hub drive such as ZF's EE-drive system.
MAN NATURAL GAS ENGINE SPECS