Closer scrutiny of emissions
From the national to the state level, the push is on to limit lift truck emissions. That's put the focus on cleaner burning engines and alternate power sources.
By Gary Forger, Editorial Director -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/1/2005
The battle for better air quality is in full swing. And lift trucks are no less a player than the family sedan.
In fact, lift truck emission standards are now under the regulatory eye of both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Current EPA standards limit emissions of hydrocarbons (HC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) to 3 grams per horsepower hour. CARB's standard today is also 3 grams. Both standards took effect last year.
But those numbers are not static. Both the EPA (202-272-0167, www.epa.gov) and CARB (800-242-4450, www.arb.ca.gov) have plans to lower acceptable emission levels in the near future with CARB being the more aggressive of the two. Not only does CARB now plan to lower engine emissions below EPA standards by 2010, but the agency is creating the first ever emissions standards for individual end user fleets. The standard would actually affect equipment beyond lift trucks. It is targeted at large spark-ignited nonroad engines (over 25 horsepower), the majority of which are lift trucks.
That, in turn, has generated considerable development work in the lift truck industry and related suppliers. Engine manufacturers are developing technology that lowers emissions. In addition, cleaner burning fuels such as propane, compressed natural gas and even hydrogen fuel cells are touting their own advances to reduce emissions. Meanwhile, suppliers of batteries, chargers and related equipment for emission-free electrics are making news of their own (see box on page 64).
There have also been countless hours spent working with the regulatory agencies to establish standards that are realistic, says Randy Wingenroth, chairman of the Air Quality Subcommittee for the Industrial Truck Association (202-296-9880, www.indtrk.org). "This has been a very good process for all from end user to OEM, and has helped us all become more environmentally aware," says Wingenroth, who is also manager of standards compliance for MCFA (713-365-1466, www.mcfa.com).
Regulating emissions
At this point, the regulatory focus is almost exclusively on CARB and its efforts. The EPA already has in place its standard that will reduce hydrocarbon (HC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions from 3 to 2 grams in 2007. Meanwhile, CARB has been working for the past two years to put in place its own set of more stringent standards.
In early 2003, CARB announced that it intended to end the sale of non-electric trucks below 8,000- pound capacity in the state by January 1, 2009. That generated considerable discussion in the lift truck industry. "CARB's assumption that electrics can substitute for ICEs [internal combustion engines] virtually across the board betrays a serious misunderstanding of the products involved," said Gary Cross of Dunaway and Cross and general counsel to the Industrial Truck Association (ITA).
During the next 15 months, the ITA worked to move CARB away from that initial position, and by spring of 2004 was successful. Instead, CARB refocused on emission levels in two arenas – engines and fleets.
"We want to harmonize our engine emission standards with those already set by the EPA for 2007," says Tom Evashenk, section manager for the zero emission vehicle implementation program at CARB. That would set the standard at 2 grams of HC and NOx in 2007.
But CARB doesn't intend to stop there. The agency wants to reduce engine emission levels to 0.6 grams as of January 1, 2010. "This is a push for cleaner technology that is achievable in the 2010 time frame," says Evashenk.
Not all hold that view. "The lift truck industry has definite concerns about technology getting us to the 0.6 gram level by 2010," says Wingenroth. "This is a pretty good jump and we're pushing the technology level with the 2007 standard," he adds.
At the same time, CARB wants to create a separate but parallel standard for end user fleets. "This puts the primary burden of compliance on the fleet user. This is a first for emission regulations in our industry," says Dale Muhlenkamp, a member of ITA's Air Quality Subcommittee and manager of product safety, standards and engineering at Toyota (949-223-7760, www.toyotaforklift.com).
Under the current plan, CARB divides end users into three fleet sizes – small (1-3 trucks), mid-size (4-25) and large (26 and more units). Each would have a separate fleet emissions standard scheduled to take effect the first day of 2009, 2011 and 2013. On each date, the emissions level would drop. The large fleet standard, for instance, would be 2.4 grams in '09, 1.7 in '11, and 1.1 in '13.
None of what has been proposed to this point is finalized yet. As Evashenk of CARB points out, "we are in the middle of developing a regulatory proposal."
Later this month or next there is expected to be a workshop for end users and suppliers to discuss the standards with CARB again. Evashenk says that the plan is to finalize the standards soon thereafter and present them to the governing board of CARB for review by late spring of this year. The review is expected to take the better part of a year, enabling the standards to be in place by the start of 2007.
While specific standard levels are still being scrutinized, there is general agreement that the final regulation will require end users to buy new equipment and/or participate in a retrofit program now under development. "End users will need better equipment to meet their needs," says Evashenk.
Some of that will very likely mean expanded use of electrics. CARB has made public estimates that, unless fleet owners accelerate their purchases of lower-emitting units, as much as 27% of large fleets will have to be electric by 2013, assuming a seven-year turnover for trucks in a fleet.
At the state level, California is not alone in its attempt to reduce emissions of lift trucks. The Railroad Commission of Texas (512-463-7288, www.rrc.state.tx.us) has in place a voluntary program that pays end users up to $7,000 per forklift to subsidize the purchase of units that meet or exceed EPA's 2004 standards. The truck that is replaced must have been owned for at least two years and must be either scrapped or sent out of the state. An initial fund of $1 million could be supplemented if the program shows early success.
Propane to hydrogen
With an eye toward the EPA 2007 standards in particular, the Propane Education and Research Council (202-452-8975, www.propanecouncil.org) has announced initial results of its own emissions testing.
Testing by the Southwest Research Institute show that propane fuel control systems produce readings for HC and NOx within the 2007 EPA standards (2 grams per horsepower hour). The test results are the first phase of a $1.39 million research study for the propane industry to assess fuel system technologies in large spark-ignited nonroad engines.
"In order to meet 2007 standards, forklift engines must perform an order of magnitude better than current systems," says Brian Feehan, managing director of the Engine Fuel Coordinating Committee of the Propane Education and Research Council. Additional testing is now underway to determine durability of these systems under the tighter requirements.
In addition, Toyota has just introduced a new compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel system that meets current EPA and CARB standards. "CNG fuel has been proven to provide the lowest emission levels over propane, gasoline and diesel," says Toyota's Mark Hartman, engineer.
Still another fuel source, hydrogen, is also becoming part of the lift truck discussion. Like electrics, hydrogen powered lift trucks are emission free. Compared to electrics, hydrogen refueling stations are said to require less floor space than battery recharging stations. Also, hydrogen eliminates the potential concerns associated with lead acid batteries.
However, this fuel cell technology is in early development stages. As a result, there is no infrastructure in place to refuel trucks at a typical plant or warehouse. Nevertheless, the technology continues to be developed and applied to lift trucks in several testing programs.
Just last month, General Motors Canada demonstrated use of a Hydrogenics (905-361-3660, www.hydrogenics.com) fuel cell in Oshawa, Ontario. As the photo on page 63 shows, a Hyster (800-497-8371, www.go.hysterusa.com) counterbalanced truck was used. Additional testing of the fuel cells is now underway as the program is expanded to include FedEx at the Toronto airport.
Elsewhere, Wal-Mart is testing hydrogen fuel cells at distribution centers in both the United States and Canada. The project is a joint venture of BOC (905-501-1700, www.boc.com), which provides indoor hydrogen refueling facilities, and Cellex Power Products (604-270-4300, www.cellexpower.com), which provides the hydrogen power units for the trucks.
In an interesting twist, lead-acid battery supplier East Penn Manufacturing (610-682-6361, www.dekabatteries.com) has teamed up with Nuvera Fuel Cells (617-245-7500, www.nuvera.com) to develop a hybrid battery/hydrogen fuel cell engine for lift trucks. The objective is to develop an emission-free system that can be refueled in minutes and be interchangeable with standard battery trays used today. The development effort is expected to take two years.
Wherever one turns today, lift truck emissions are clearly on the minds of many and will certainly remain so for the foreseeable future.
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