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Podcast

2 Things Fleets Need to Lower Emissions and Increase Performance

Learn about Aqueous DPF cleaning equipment by EcoClean, and DynaCERT’s HydraGEN Technology that both help lower emissions for fleets.

Episode 266: In the news, we regularly hear about how new mandates are being put in place that will push us to battery-electric vehicles and other zero-emission vehicles in the next 10 years. But the reality is there are major hurdles to reaching those goals, which means we’re going to have ICE vehicles around for many years to come.

In this episode, we talk to two subject matter experts to understand how fleets can reduce their costs, and improve productivity while also meeting the standards for greener fleets.

Learn about Aqueous DPF cleaning equipment by EcoClean, and DynaCERT’s HydraGEN Technology that both help lower emissions for fleets.

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Transcript of Episode

Jamie Irvine: 

You are listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. 

So we’re talking about diesel emission systems and the maintenance and repair that goes into keeping trucks on the road longer. We’re talking about decarbonization of ICE vehicles, internal combustion engines, and we’re talking about the overall move towards a neutral or a carbon neutral environment where we operate commercial equipment. Now in the media and in the news, you’ll hear lots about how there are mandates being put in place that is going to move us to battery electric vehicles and other zero emission vehicles within 10 to 15 years.

But the reality is, is that there’s some major hurdles to accomplishing those goals, and there’s technology that hasn’t even been developed yet that is going to be needed in order for us to meet those mandates. That means that when it comes to ICE vehicles, we are going to have them around for many, many years to come. 

And so today I want to talk to certain people who have subject matter expertise about those various aspects of operating an ICE vehicle and really get an understanding of what we can do to make our vehicles as efficient and lowest cost possible to try to meet the needs not only of what the needs of the equipment are, but also to try to meet our obligations in the marketplace.

So let’s talk specifically about diesel emission systems to start, and I’ve got my guest, Kevin Johnson, Head of Sales at EcoClean here. They are a company that manufactures cleaning equipment for diesel emission system components like your DPF. Kevin, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here. 

Kevin Johnson: 

Thanks for having me, Jamie. Excited to be here. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Okay, so I’d like to start off our conversation by talking about the trends that you’re seeing with fleets and how they’re handling their diesel emission system maintenance and repairs. What are you seeing in the marketplace? 

Kevin Johnson: 

What we’re seeing is that they’re making concentrated efforts to improve their preventative maintenance programs and they’re really trying to make that more efficient. And what we’re seeing is that unfortunately there are some of those decisions that they may be making that they don’t realize that that’s actually helping drive up their costs rather than helping reduce those costs and operate their fleet more efficiently. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So when it comes to those kinds of decisions, what is it that they’re doing or not doing that is inadvertently driving that cost up? 

Kevin Johnson: 

So when you think about what we specialize in, which is DPF cleaning, if you think about that process, when you go in to have your DPF cleaned, traditional methods are 10 to 12 hours just to get that DPF cleaned and is that time is there, that truck is just sitting there, there’s more downtime, there’s long just waiting for hours. If they have to send that off, it might be two or three days before they’re able to get that DPF back and then put back in the truck. So this, it’s increasing that downtime, which is that hidden cost of the DPF cleaning. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So if they’re cleaning themselves with a thermal system, there’s that 10 to 12 hour window, and if they’re sending it out, it could be as much as two to three days. And yeah, you’re right, that downtime, I just think of that truck sitting there and also if it’s stuck in a bay or if it’s sitting in a bay, then that’s also a bay that another truck can’t come in and worked on that and get it back on the road. And then there’s all the lost revenue as well. So those costs suddenly add up really quickly just because they’ve made a decision about the type of cleaning that they’re engaged in. 

Kevin Johnson: 

Exactly. And studies have shown is that on average it’s $750 a day for a truck to be down, and that doesn’t include the bay time that your truck is taking up. And then if you have a fleet and you got three or four trucks down, you’re in the thousands of dollars pretty quickly. So we’re looking at trying to help that and knowing that the fleets and the trucks are the backbone of our country and that we need to keep those goods moving and help get the things to where they need wherever they need to be. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So it’s a challenging problem to solve in many ways when you’re working on commercial equipment and you’re trying to make the best decisions possible, you’re trying to optimize the process to the degree possible. You keep saying fleets. Could you be more specific as to the type of fleet that you’re typically working with? Tell me a little bit more about your ideal customer. 

Kevin Johnson: 

So we’re looking at medium to large fleets. Now there’s not necessarily a right number, but if you have 7,500 trucks or obviously more something that we’re going to be able to help you keep that service in shop. So as you’re doing your preventative maintenance and you’ve got those trucks in there, you can do this while doing an oil change, doing work on the tires, whether changing tires, rotating tires, no, just any simple thing.

Our process is going to bring that down from 10 to 12 hours down to two hours. So now you can do that in house and it makes more sense obviously if you have more trucks like that. But we see that the fleets with 75 to a hundred trucks and obviously more are the ones that are really excited about what we have to offer. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So if you are in a situation where you’re under that, you can still get access to this type of technology that we’re going to talk about it in a minute and shrink the amount of time, but it’s not necessarily cost effective to try to do in-house if you’re smaller than that. But if you are north of 75 to a hundred units, what I’m hearing you say is there’s an economy of scale there that if you bring the DPF cleaning and diesel emission system maintenance program, you can achieve a really great result in lower your cost of operation.

So let’s talk about the actual solution. What is the solution that takes you away from the traditional thermal method? What is the methodology and why is that going to lower total cost of operation? 

Kevin Johnson: 

Yeah, so what we did is we challenged that traditional way of thinking, the thermal way. So we created what has become the only 100% aqueous cleaning machine on the market. There’s no heating, there’s no baking, there’s no blowing involved in any of our process. And it took a lot of work with engineers and just service people and a lot of important industry leaders to come up with a system that allowed us to clean it without losing the effectiveness of a cleaning. And actually when we came down to it, it was actually more effective is what we’re finding out.

But as we go through, there’s a simple step-by-step process that we’re going to increase that vehicle uptime and the couple of the key things with our system, like I said, it’s a hundred percent aqueous so there’s no heating. It’s a step by step process so that you know can have multiple filters going at once where you’re limited on a thermal cleaning. 

How big is your kiln when you put it in there, how big is it? And that just being in there, it’s 10 to 12 hours, but if you have a small one, you can only fit four, you can only clean four in a day. And ours you can have four or five going at a time in different steps throughout the process. So it’s safer and easier on the actual filter itself. So the precious metals that make up that filter, we’re not harming those. So you can clean it more often, which is a huge asset.

The big thing that makes ours different than some of the other methods out there is it’s high volume, low pressure. So it’s not just, Hey, we’re just going to throw water through it. We really spent time with these engineers and looked to see how it goes with our special surfactant that we made and then the amount of water and the pressure, it is just like I said, if you just put as much pressure as you can, that water just sprays everywhere and we’re not looking to do that.

We wanted to help break up that soot and ash that’s inside the filters and go through there and small enough and able to get through the walls inside the filters. So just a lot of research and development that went through it to make sure we got that process just right. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Okay. So aqueous, it stands for water. Is there any special kind of water that needs to be used or can you basically hook up to your shop water at your shop? 

Kevin Johnson: 

So we typically will have some recommend some type of like deionized water, something that doesn’t have some of those minerals in there that can help attach to it just helps get it a little bit cleaner, but we’re actually kind of finding it’s not as necessary as maybe originally thought.

But we do have it. The machine itself has a hundred gallon tank and each filter that we have has 600 gallons of water that goes through it, but it, it’s all recycled. So we have a filtration system that it goes through as you go through, so you’re kind of going through that tank six times per cleaning.

So with the filtration process, it cleans everything out, separates that soot and ash. And the great thing about it, it’s all biodegradable. So when you’re done and you need to change the filter, it’s something you can just throw in the trash in. You don’t have to get any special waste management or anything like that to come out and take care of it. It’s all biodegradable. 

Jamie Irvine: 

You said another word surfactant. What is that? 

Kevin Johnson: 

So it’s a special solution that we created that will put in the filter at a couple different times, just a few squirts of a jug there that helps break up that soot and ash. Chemistry behind it is just designed to attack that soot and ash that’s attached to the cell walls and it’ll help break that up so that when that water comes through, it’ll help clean it up. 

Jamie Irvine: 

And is that injected directly into the water tank or is that applied somehow directly on the filter? 

Kevin Johnson: 

Right into the top of the filter, just into the fill tank. So we sell and as part of the deal it comes in a three or four gallon jug, you just a few squirts into a cup measuring cup and just pour right in the top. It’s nothing scientific about that. The solution itself is very scientific with the process of doing that, and that’s one of the few manual labor things that you have to do through the process. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Okay, makes sense. So we’re taking that 10 to 12 hour cycle time with the thermal system and we’re dropping that down to what are we typically seeing? Is it four hours, two hours? 

Kevin Johnson: 

We can take a filter from dirty to clean going through each step of the process in two hours or less, 

Jamie Irvine: 

Two hours or less. So I know with the thermal there’s a cooling time that’s part of the 10 to 12 hours because you’ve got to let those filters cool. How do you handle a wet filter? What’s the process there? 

Kevin Johnson: 

So as you take it through the process and when you get to the end of the cleaning process itself, that part is a hundred percent computer guided, so you don’t have to do anything with that. Each stage takes of that cleaning process, 15, 20 minutes, somewhere in there on just a kind of regular filter.

But as you get done with that cleaning process and you take it out of the machine, take it over to our dryer where you’ll put it in there and it’ll get up to 215, 220 degrees Fahrenheit. But what it does is it builds the tension and that tension and the pressure finally break that water and you can actually see it kind of come out of the bottom if you were to have a camera down there and break that tension where all that water is released.

And as soon as that is done, and once again that takes 20 minutes, 15, 20 minutes, not really more than a half an hour ever, but it’s got the jets on the top and the bottom that kind of help build that pressure that it finally breaks. But as soon as that’s done, it’s ready to go back on your truck. It’s dry and there’s very, very little else that you have to do. You can do the testing afterwards, but once it gets through that dryer in that short time, it’s ready to go. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So it sounds like this system is very user-friendly, so the training curve on getting someone in-house to do it is probably very reasonable. What about though the requirements in the shop? We know that floor space in a shop is precious. How much space is this going to take and what is the installation process involved? How do you get power to it? So could you explain us how that works? 

Kevin Johnson: 

So if you get the whole family of products, the dryer, the tester, the soak machine, the actual cleaning machine itself, it’s only about 25 feet by six and a half feet deep. So it doesn’t take up a ton of space in the shop. As far as power 208 3 phase, you need a couple different of those outlets to be able to plug it in.

I think it’s four total, two for the dryer and then the back pressure tester and the machine, the cleaning machine itself. But other than that, it’s pretty simple and will come out and help install, help that make sure everything’s running and that somebody knows how to run the machine. As far as the power, it’s an easy thing an electrician can do. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Okay, so let’s talk about the economic impact of bringing this system in-house for a fleet with north of 75 units. If they’ve been using the thermal system 10 to 12 hour cycle time, now they’re down to two hours. Walk me through how this impacts fleets in a positive way. 

Kevin Johnson: 

Going back to what we talked about earlier, if you look at it, it’s $750 a day for your truck to be sitting. Now if you have, let’s just make it simple math, a hundred trucks one day a year that you save, that’s $75,000 right there and you’re helping that. And since it’s not destructive to the filter with our cleaning system, you might be able to clean it twice in a year instead of once a year.

You can do it more because it doesn’t hurt the filter at all. And that’s going to just increase your operating costs. So your fuel mileage is going to go up, you’re going to have less breakdowns on the road. So you’re going to see just numbers through the roof of what we’re going to be able to do and how that’s going to impact your bottom line. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So I’m just doing rough math here, but I’m going to say that a fleet with a hundred units is going to be cash positive on this investment in something like eight months. 

Kevin Johnson: 

Yes, absolutely. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So after that, you’re just making money, you’re just making cash, making it rain cash. 

Kevin Johnson: 

And you’re on the road because you, like you mentioned earlier, bigger, more revenue too. So you’re on, trucks are on the road, they’re going to have a chance to earn more money. So we’re just looking at it of money, we’re saving with the downtime now you’re getting the added revenue. So yeah, you’re going to be making cash and improving that bottom line very rapidly. 

Jamie Irvine: 

That’s fantastic. Well, and I like the other point because a cleaner diesel emission system is also a more efficient truck, a truck that pollutes less, that operates more efficiently, better fuel mileage, all of that, that all contributes to moving in the direction that we’re trying to go as a society, and I think that’s very, very important.

You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. If you’d like to learn more about this aqueous system, go to ecleanadvantage.com. Links are in the show notes. Kevin, thanks again for being on the show. Hopefully you’ll come back one day and talk to us a little bit more about this. 

Kevin Johnson: 

Thanks for having us. 

Jamie Irvine: 

We’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. We’ll be right back.

Commercial break:

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We’ve seen it in the news every day we’re heading to a zero emissions world, but how quickly will that be achieved? And in the meantime, what is being done to eliminate diesel emission, to make it more efficient and to lower the total cost of operations for fleets that are running ICE vehicles?

Jamie Irvine:

Well, I’m very happy to have Jamie McDonald, president of Mobile Emissions Testing. They’re an authorized dynaCERT dealer. on our podcast today where we’re going to talk in depth about decarbonization. We’re going to learn what it is, how it works, and how it benefits commercial fleets. Jamie, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here. 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Thank you, Jamie. Thanks for having me on your program. 

Jamie Irvine: 

I’m glad to have you. Two Jamie’s on the show. Don’t think that’s happened before, so that’s good. Let’s talk a little bit about these targets for reducing carbon emissions. You were mentioning that there is a Paris Accord that certain countries are aiming for and they’ve actually made decarbonization of the way that they’re going to achieve those commitments from the Paris Accord. Can you explain that a little bit? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Correct, Jamie. So a lot of countries are looking at various technologies including hydrogen and electrification of their vehicles. What dynaCERT offers is a hydrogen on-demand system that’s a retrofit for any diesel powered application, new or old. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Okay, that’s really interesting. So it’s a complete retrofit system, and does that completely eliminate the use of diesel fuel and eliminate the things that they’re trying to remove when they talk about net zero? How does this Hybrid system actually work? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

So the way it works is the engine is still powered with diesel. Diesel is the primary fuel. We make hydrogen on demand from distilled water through a very unique patented electrolyser that separates the water into hydrogen and oxygen and those gases are fed into the air intake of a diesel engine and that that’s a catalyst for cleaner combustion. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Okay. So what is the connection, let’s say, between this technology and where they’re headed with EPA regulations? Like in 2027 I know that the EPA has announced that they’re lowering the NOx output. Would these hydrogen systems be able to help companies actually meet those requirements? Is there a connection there? Between that and the EPA regulations? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

It would definitely help companies meet their emissions. But what it would also do is you can retrofit this on an older engine, say something pre 1996, all those engines are mechanically controlled with no computer and no sensors. They’re a dirtier engine. And when you retrofit an old engine like that with hydrogen, you’re able to dramatically reduce the emissions from that and make that old engine or a newer engine meet a much cleaner standard by reducing the tailpipe emissions. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So if that’s the case in its older equipment, is this restricted to on-highway vehicles or is this a system that could be adapted to many different types of diesel engines, both stationary equipment and off-road equipment? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

It’s available for any type of diesel engine. So dynaCERT right now has had a lot of success in the mining industry with the really big caterpillar off-road dump trucks that you’d see in open pit lining, and they have seen a tremendous reduction in fuel consumption and carbon emissions in those industries.

Those industries are very carbon intensive and they’re really looking to reduce their emissions impact and this is such a simple retrofit for a vehicle that’s already an asset to the company. They don’t need to go out and buy a new truck or wait and see what’s coming down the pipe. You can do this today, which is part of why it’s such a big success. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Yeah, that makes sense to me. So let’s talk about the actual process of retrofitting one of these vehicles. Is this something that a typical technician could do on their own? Is there a specialized process? Do they have to bring it somewhere? How does that part of it work? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

All of the units are installed by authorized dealers or authorized installers. For dynaCERT we handle the install something be because it would be new for the equipment is quite specialized and it needs to be installed in a certain way, but it’s a very simple retrofit on a say on class eight truck. You can install one of these units in three or four hours, and as soon as we have it installed and turn the unit on, start making hydrogen on demand, there’s an immediate reduction in tail pipe emissions. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Right. So instantly you get that benefit. In addition to the reduction in tailpipe emissions, are there any other benefits that they get if they install one of these hybrid systems? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

If you install it on a vehicle with emissions after control systems, so those would be vehicles made after 2007, dynaCERT has seen the particulate filter replacement be extended by about 30%. They’ve also seen the oil stay quite a bit cleaner with less soot content, a cleaner engine like that, it would last quite a bit longer because of the internals being so clean. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So less wear on the actual internals. This is really interesting. Yeah. Now what about after the system has been installed? What kind of support do you continue to give customers that you’ve installed these systems on in the way of preventative maintenance and repair? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Well, the biggest benefit that we have is the system itself is actually smart. So it has an onboard SMART ECU that’s patented by dynaCERT and that onboard ECU interfaces with the onboard computer of a truck and through the Hydrolitica app, it’s an app for any desktop or mobile device.

You’re able to track the fuel consumption and fuel savings and the emissions reductions in real time. And all of this data comes directly from the vehicle’s ECM. So one of the things that we’re really, really excited about is earning verified carbon credits.

So every litre of diesel we save, we don’t emit those emissions into the atmosphere, dynaCERT is patented the methodology, and they also have the means and methods of earning a carbon credit from an internal combustion engine, which is something that hasn’t been done as far as I know in the world anywhere. 

Jamie Irvine: 

How are those credits used? Is it used by the end user? Is it used by dynaCERT themselves? Where does that become a benefit? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Carbon credits are going to be very high quality because there’s so much science and data being backed up from it, coming directly from the ECM. It’s not an estimate. These are actually a real numbers. The carbon credits are going to be shared between the end user and dinosaur. 

Jamie Irvine: 

And how do they like cash in that credit then? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Well, right now dynaCERT has spent about two or three years having this carbon credit project verified. So our methodology has been approved. Vera, we’re working with Vera. Vera’s the biggest carbon credit authority in the globe, and we’re waiting right now for the final, we’re at the final stages of them fully certifying this project. So it’s gone out for public comments and now it’s being audited by a third party. So we’re not able to earn the credits today, but any day they’re going to sign off on this. 

Jamie Irvine: 

And then when that’s finalized, then those credits will be available. And like you say, they’ll be shared with the end user. 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Yeah. 

Jamie Irvine: 

What’s the anticipated way to use those credits? Is it offset against something else and lower expenses or what’s the plan there? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

The way that the carbon credits are going to work, right now in Canada, we have a carbon tax and that’s supposed to go to $170 a ton. The credit will always be worth more than the tax. So it’s quite lucrative if you save say five or 10,000 liters of fuel, we’re talking about several carbon credits, I mean hundreds of carbon credits per truck.

Those credits could be used to, you could cash them in and have the monetary value of them, or they could be applied in different ways to completely offset residual emissions from that vehicle or from other areas of the industry that right now the technology isn’t there to go green in those areas. So it could be very diversified. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Yeah, that’s really interesting. And so any country with that carbon tax, then that would play a role in reducing the tax burden for the company. 

Jamie MacDonald: 

The tax also helps set the price of the carbon credit itself. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Right. So it’s a system that kind of a feedback loop that feeds each other in some ways. Yeah, that makes sense. 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Something else I’d like to explain the process of how we actually reduce emissions is when the hydrogen enters the air intake of the engine. Hydrogen is a very nice compliment to diesel combustion. Hydrogen burns 10 times faster and 10 times hotter than diesel does. So it kickstarts the combustion process and the way that we save fuel and reduce emissions is we turn what would’ve been wasted exhaust emissions.

We actually turn that into power. So instead of it being discarded, we are, we’re actually getting a way more complete burn, which increases power and torque. It reduces the burden on the emissions control after treatment system, we see a reduction in fuel consumption. dynaCERT had this tested and they’ve seen up to a 19% reduction in fuel consumption verified by a third party independent laboratories. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Does that go up and down with how hard the engine’s working? So let’s say that we leave Ottawa and we’re heading west and we’re rolling across the prairies and there’s not a lot of hills or not a lot. The engine’s not working particularly hard, then we have to climb the Rockies when we get to Alberta. So depending on how hard the engine is working, does this scale up and down or is it just more of an average across all miles driven? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

The unit interfaces with the truck and it can see and it actually learns and adapts to the parameters. In the ECM, most ECMs have over 1 million fuel tables. So you’re always trying to maintain the best, like the ECM is always trying to maintain the best fuel consumption while meeting the emissions requirements.

It adapts to the hydrogen and basically when you’re on the open road, you’re able to ease up off of, if you didn’t have the unit on there, you’re able to ease up and still go the same speed and still have the same amount of power because the engine is actually making considerably more horsepower.

There are a lot of variables that can change fuel consumption. So there’s 19%, the dynaCERT that was on a stationary application, that engine ran at one speed. Those engines are a lot easier to dial in because it’s only has one speed and one load like a generator, or in this case it was a crane. But there are a lot of variables, but the unit itself is quite unique that it has those smart capabilities to adapt. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So let’s say that you’ve got it on a truck and then you’ve taken that cross-country trip and then you need to go in for a repair. The technicians who are working at let’s say a dealership or an independent repair shop, they maybe have never seen this technology before. So if they run into an issue there, how can they get support? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Well, the best part about this process is we don’t make any modifications to the engine at all. So it doesn’t void any manufacturer’s warranty, not in North America and in many parts of the world, it doesn’t void the warranty a at all. You’re able to still get support on the engine. They may notice, hey, we’ve never seen one of these things before and contact us directly if they had questions or concerns, but you’re able to still get it work done.

We don’t make any modifications to the engine, the engine block, all that stays the same V ecm. We don’t make any modifications at all other than we’re drawing power from the batteries to power the unit. It’s a very small amp draw. It’s about the same as turning on the headlights of the vehicle. That’s another neat thing. The way that the unit works is that we’re able to make a considerable amount of hydrogen at a very low amp draw, which is a huge benefit.

Hydrogen on demand isn’t new, but dynaCERT to spend over a hundred million dollars perfecting this technology and lot of that, making it smart. So in the olden days, people would draw like a hundred amps off the alternator. So you’re stealing so much power that at the end of the day you’re going to be going through alternators or it’s just, it’s too much of a current draw. And like I said, we’re only drawing about what the headlights would take 15 amps roughly. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Well, and that is important because in modern trucks there is so much demand on the electrical system as it is. So anything that we add to that demand, we want to make sure we’re getting a positive ROI out of it. Otherwise it’s taxing and already tax system. So Jamie, not all fleets are made equally. They, depending on the vocation that they’re in, depending on the environments that they’re working in and the nature of the work that they do with those trucks, there’s a lot of different parameters there. So what is the fleet that maybe has where this technology would have the most impact 

Jamie MacDonald: 

In North America and really around the world the biggest polluters in a city is the actual municipal fleet itself. These fleets consists of sometimes thousands of transit buses, snowplows, garbage trucks. They also have off-road equipment bulldozers and the dumps starting with the cities that would make the most meaningful impact in each city. And then of course, other trucking companies are interested in this too.

The government has just launched in Canada a Green Freight Assessment Program, and they’re going to fund up to a certain amount they’re, it’ll be a cost sharing program, and they’ll fund a certain amount to have devices like dynaCERT’s hydrogen installed. So that’s something that people can look at. They’re, they’re going to announce more about this program in the spring and it’s springtime now. So any day we’re going to learn more about these programs. 

Jamie Irvine: 

So in spring 2023, we should see that start to roll out. That reminds me of the retrofit programs back in the 2010 roughly where the California, they funded the retrofits, so vehicles that didn’t have diesel emission systems could get them put on. So it sounds like it’ll be a similar type program. One question I had about the way the system performs, how susceptible is it to changes in environment?

So for example, we are just leaving the Canadian winter where we saw minus 40 and minus 50 here in Alberta at one point, if you’re driving down into the states, you might be going through a desert or something like that. So there can be quite a change in both temperature in things like how much humid humidity the vehicle is in. So does those kinds of external environmental factors impact the performance of the system? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Absolutely not. It’s quite incredible what dynaCERT has done. This product is rated for minus 40 to plus 40, and it’s meant to operate in all weather conditions, even though the hydrogen we’re using is really stored as water. The way that the unit works is the water never freezes. The water always stays liquid. It’s very unique in the way that dynaCERT does that without heating elements. It’s made right here in Toronto, Canada, and it’s designed for the coldest winters or the hottest summer days. 

Jamie Irvine: 

That’s good to know. One last thing. Does the system need to be topped up with hydrogen or fluid, excuse my ignorance of it, I’ve just never seen the system before. So is it a completely sealed, contained system that once it’s installed you’re good forever? Does it need to be? How does that work? 

Jamie MacDonald: 

So the system is installed on the truck and we use distilled water. The unit needs to be filled up every 50 engine hours. So every couple of days it needs to be topped off with distilled water. The really neat thing about hydrogen and water is one liter of water, there’s over a thousand liters of hydrogen. It’s incredible. The amount of hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element on planet Earth and one liter of water. There’s a tremendous amount of hydrogen. 

Jamie Irvine: 

Wow, that’s fascinating. Well, I really appreciate you taking some time describing the system, answering all of my questions. I really didn’t know anything about it, so I was excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you very much. You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report.

I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Jamie McDonald, president of Mobile Emissions Testing, an authorized dynaCERT dealer. If you’d like to learn more, go to dynaCERT.com. Links are in the show notes. Jamie, thanks so much for being on the show. I hope you come back on someday and talk to us about this again. 

Jamie MacDonald: 

Thanks, Jamie. I really appreciate being on the show. 

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