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PRODUCTS ACCESORiES * USA - An eco-friendly way to cool big trucks
A company has developed technology that cools truck cabs without engine idling
USA -CNN, by Diane Hawkins-Cox -5 Oct 2008: -- Some truckers use devices that cool cabs without idling. Most of these technologies either use batteries, which eventually wear out and have to be replaced, or fuel, which emits pollution. But Webasto, a company that makes trucking equipment, has found an alternative... Webasto calls the system BlueCool. The heart of the system is a 300-pound black box that's mounted on the truck's frame rail. As the trucker drives, the system sends refrigerant through a matrix of graphite and a water/glycol mixture inside the box, creating blocks of ice... When the truck is stopped, the driver turns on an air handler that circulates coolant around the ice and blows cold air from the unit into the bunk area of the cab. The fan and circulation pump use only 3.5 to 10 amps from the truck's battery -- which means there's no danger of draining the battery, Webasto says... John Thomas, director of commercial vehicles for Webasto Products, North America, said the installation price of a BlueCool system is approximately $5500. The system pays for itself in less than a year, he said... It sounds like sales hype, but Thomas' comment is backed up by EPA statistics. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates idling trucks consume nearly one gallon of fuel per hour, so the typical truck idles 2400 hours per year. At $4 a gallon, that's $9600 in annual fuel costs... (Photo: Buck Threehouse, right, explains the BlueCool system to a trucker at a Georgia truck stop) Labels: trucks' products and accesories
posted by Unknown @ 3:32 PM
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