Beating pollution with BG Products
Engine treatment specialist BG Products partners with fleet organisations to improve fuel efficiency and emissions on engines of all shapes and sizes – from vans and lorry fleets through to diesel-fuelled power stations.
The company says that organisations it works with are seeing real, tangible financial benefits in terms of fuel economy and reduced AdBlue usage, as well as dramatic reductions in expensive injector, DPF and other component failures, vehicle downtime, wear and tear, recovery, repair and loss of earnings.
“BG works with organisations with all types of fleets to improve environmental performance, the key common denominator being the combustion of diesel fuel resulting in carbon deposits,” said the company.
“These deposits interfere with quality combustion which in turn causes the engine to create more harmful emissions than necessary. BG Products are proving that clean is green is mean and lean.”
Originally formed in 1971, it has grown into a corporation with distributors worldwide. BG Products first arrived in Great Britain in 2000.
“Manufactured in El Dorado, Kansas, and distributed all over the world, BG’s professional-use products and equipment are designed to add more efficiency, miles per gallon and long-term reliability to treated engines,” said the company.
From nearly 50 years’ experience in the industry with substantial trial and testing, the company says its products continue to demonstrate that well-maintained vehicles function more efficiently, and correspondingly emit less pollution.
“Successive trials comparing data pre- and post- preventative maintenance regime continue to demonstrate significant reductions in harmful emissions, with an average return of 4-7 per cent MPG improvement, making these environmental improvements self-funding,” it said.
The firm cites a long-term preventative maintenance case study, which specifically demonstrated why a BG Products service regime allows a valuable vehicle to stay on the road for longer and cut rates of expensive DPR/EGR component failure.
Prior to BG treatment, horsepower for a regularly serviced 6.4 litre Ford pickup truck was measured at 243 kW, torque at 489 Nm. After service with BG Products, horsepower reportedly rose by 7.8 per cent to 262 kW, torque even greater by 8.2 per cent to 529 Nm.
Minimising build-up of performance-inhibiting deposits also reduces the frequency that the DPF needs to regenerate, says the company, and therefore its risk of premature failure. In this same study, data was taken prior to/since the service showing distance between regeneration cycles more than doubling from 121 miles to 244 miles between regenerations.
Meanwhile, an emissions improvement test featuring a Morrisons DAF CF 85 12.9L supermarket delivery vehicle clearly demonstrated BG Products’ ability to clean deposits and reduce pollution, the company reports.
Data was collected prior to a BG 9700 Injector cleaning Service completed on the vehicle’s fuel system. A 10-mile drive was completed before subsequent results were taken.
A comparison of pre-service and post-service data indicated a reduction in emissions of 28 per cent.
A further trial carried out by BG Latin America involved seven trucks owned by SAB Miller (now AB InBev), a multi-national brewing company. The vehicles ranged in size from Isuzu trucks approximately with 200 HP to international trucks with 500+ HP. Sustainability was measured after two months and then verified again after three and six months.
Average long-term results suggested that opacity (particulate matter) reduced by 68 per cent, NOx PPN emissions reduced by 28 per cent, hydrocarbons reduced by 86 per cent, and CO2 and fuel consumption reduced by 13 per cent.
“Professionals across all transport sectors who have witnessed the long-lasting effectiveness of BG maintenance regimes continue to testify to BG Products’ ability to clean, or keep clean, the inside of an engine – as a clean engine is more efficient, more economical and more powerful,” said the firm.
“In a combustion cycle, fuel is combusted and carbon is released, creating deposits (soot). These deposits attach themselves to critical components in the engine, most pertinently the fuel injectors and the piston rings.
“In the case of the injectors, the deposits interfere with the atomisation of the fuel into the combustion chamber. This leads to inefficient combustion and exacerbates carbon deposits.
“The second critical area where deposit formation affects engine efficiency is the piston rings. Deposits get behind the ring seat (the groove that the rings sit in) restricting the ability of the rings to flex and centre and create the seal between the piston and the cylinder. When this seal is interfered with there is a negative effect on compression.
“Compression is critical to combustion in a diesel engine and when compromised, again, leads to poorer combustion, less MPG and higher emissions. Standard service regimes cannot, and do not, address the issue of deposits. BG Products’ treatments clean these components of those deposits, so they do operate as designed.”
By allowing expensive equipment to stay on the road much longer, preventative maintenance becomes self-funding, says BG Products.
It reports that a county council fleet featuring Ford Transits, bin lorries and other municipal vehicles continues to see MPG improvements of above seven per cent compared to its pre-BG Products regime, and a complete elimination of DPF issues.
