New off-road regulations
New off-road regulations – As regulators seek to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty off-road vehicles, lubricants can contribute to the cause, according to speakers at a recent industry event.
But original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) may be wary of a practice that has been popular for automobiles, the use of low-viscosity engine oils.
Emissions from heavy-duty off-road vehicles are restricted in the United States, but these regulations for off-road vehicles lag behind controls for light- and heavy-duty vehicles. To date, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) have set limits for pollutants such as nitrous oxides and particulates.
Now there is a move to add limits to greenhouse gas emissions – mainly carbon dioxide – as is already being done for cars and trucks on the road.
At Lubricant Expo North America on March 19, Jeff Harmening, senior program manager for the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) Engine Oil Licensing and Certification System (EOLCS), pointed out that CARB has begun work on possible Tier 5 rules that would regulate CO2 emissions from off-highway vehicles for the first time.
The EPA has not yet done this work, but California has often been at the forefront of environmental regulation in the country. The council intends to present its proposal, which would also reduce limits on
NOx and particulates, by next year, with the idea of implementing it by 2029, Harmening said.
Petro-Canada Lubricants’ Global Technology Director, Vittorio Lopopolo, said that there are several ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and some involve lubricants or can affect them.
Reducing lubricant viscosity has obviously been a popular approach to reduce drag, improve fuel economy and thus reduce CO2 emissions in on-road vehicles and could be used in their off-road counterparts, he said. But this is more likely to lead to wear problems in heavy off-road equipment, given the large loads their engines bear.
Changes in engine design could help, but could alter operating conditions – for example, by increasing operating temperatures, which could challenge the durability of the lubricant.
Modern emission control technologies could be employed, as with on-road vehicles, but many of these require reductions in lubricant levels of sulphated ash, phosphorus and sulphur, which can create challenges for anti-wear and extreme pressure performance.
As with road vehicles, operators of all-terrain equipment could switch to electric models, but this would probably lead to fragmentation of equipment designs, making the product offering more complex for lubricant suppliers.
The industry could switch to alternative fuels, such as hydrogen fuel cells, but alternatives often create new requirements for lubricants, and this could also complicate the product offering.
Lopopolo added, however, that such challenges present opportunities for the lubricants industry – opportunities to provide solutions for end users.
The lubricants industry has had great success in enabling improvements in other applications and is ready to bring that track record to heavy off-road services,” he said.
Corey Trobaugh, senior director of applied sciences and technology at Cummins, a manufacturer of engines for a wide variety of uses, including diesel engines used in heavy-duty on- and off-highway applications, focused on the use of light engine oils to improve fuel economy for on-highway trucks, pointing out that some operators have chosen not to recommend the use of such oils in some engines due to concerns that thin oil films could provide inadequate protection against wear. Such decisions led the American Petroleum Institute to split its latest heavy-duty diesel oil performance standard into two specifications: API FA-4 for lighter oils and API CK-4 for others that are not so light.
Trobaugh said Cummins has not recommended FA-4 for its off-road engines and has no plans to do so because customers are prioritizing wear protection over fuel economy.
“For off-highway vehicles, we still recommend oils registered as CK-4,” he said. “The main reason is that so far we haven’t received any requests from customers to switch to FA-4.”
