A rubbish truck that actually runs on rubbish!

For six months, a street cleansing truck in Camden was actually powered by a fuel derived from landfill waste. Or, as Mayor Boris Johnson put it, "it runs on rhubarb!" Liquid biomethane (LBM) is considered to be a carbon neutral alternative to fossil fuels.
The truck emitted almost 60% less CO2, less noise and consumed less fuel than either diesel or CNG, with no reliabilty issues. It also travelled twice as far as the current CNG fleet between re-fuelling stops. The trial was conducted by Veolia Environmental Services, Iveco and Camden Council using Gasrec’s liquid biomehtane fuel, with funding and evaluation support by Cenex. The next step is to produce the fuel at local landfill sites.

Implementing CBM in part of Veolia’s street cleansing operations in Camden has enabled a continuous cycle to take place: from waste collection to waste decomposition to biogas production to vehicle fuel – and back to waste collection again as the fuel is being used to collect more waste.

From an operational perspective, the CBM-powered vehicle has proven to be more efficient due in part to the new higher power vehicle, but also due to the improved fuel quality of the CBM when compared with that used in the CNG-fuelled vehicle. It only requires to be filled up with fuel once a day, lasting for an entire double shift, accepting up to 38kg of CBM, whereas CNG-powered vehicles need to be filled up twice per day. It also provides better measurement for drivers on how much fuel they are adding and drivers have commented on how much more responsive the CBM-powered Cage was compared with previous CNG-powered Cage vehicles. Also, the CBM-powered vehicle has proven to be a lot less noisy than its counterparts, making it ideal for urban settings and particularly for early morning or late night work.

We are very pleased that the trial of CBM has proven to be a success as it has enabled us to realise the potential of the fuel in reducing climate change impacts and contributing to reducing our dependence on mineral fuels. Of course it was just a pilot scheme over a relatively short period, but it has shown us that the potential is there.

From this trial we can see that there is an opportunity for further development of this type of technology in some of our operations and areas that we can now consider include developing a system to harness the fuel from our own network of landfill sites and seeing if we can work with our partners in utilising the technology amongst our fleet of light goods vehicles.
- Keith Riley, MD for Technical Services at Veolia

The gas we use to make the CBM for this vehicle comes from a landfill site in Albury, Surrey, which means it is not depleting fossil resources. Through creating and selling this fuel product, we recover the latent energy stored in material discarded by society, providing power which is particularly suited to vehicles operating in the urban environment.

We are particularly pleased with the improvements achieved in air quality when using CBM to displace diesel. Every Local Authority in the UK would welcome reductions of 90% particulate matter, 60% reduction in nitrogen oxides, 50% reduction in sulphur dioxide and even a noise reduction of around 30%.
- Richard Lilleystone, Gasrec CEO

Iveco has a lot of experience on natural power using both CNG and CBM with over 4,000 Dailys operating around Europe to-date. We are committed to this technology and believe it offers significant environmental and economic benefits when operating in urban conditions. Iveco selects Gasrec as preferred supplier >>
- Nigel Emms, Brand & Communications Director at Iveco UK

We are very pleased to have supported Camden’s innovative trial. It provides a strong example of biomethane use in a commercial vehicle application. The independently verified data will be welcomed by organisations considering switching their fleets to biomethane or other low carbon options.
- Robert Evans, CEO of Cenex

From an operational perspective this vehicle has performed exceptionally well and has been 100% reliable. The routine maintenance and test measurements were completed at our Dunstable Dealership where we worked closely with Veolia, Gasrec and Iveco in ensuring that the test results were accurate and used our expertise and knowledge of the CNG Daily as a comparison and the CBM Daily showed considerable improvements against the older model.
- Andrew Smith, Group Aftersales Director of Stormont Truck & Van

Now Revolve is offering you the opportunity to test-drive the Iveco Daily and see Gasrec's new biomethane-powered VW Caddy van at The Green Motor Expo 24.09!