The following is a report on engine manufacturers’ progress towards EPA2010 compliance:

Cummins Despite a reversal in course for Cummins heavy-duty engines, the company expects an easy transition to producing SCR engines. Cummins was already developing SCR for its mid-range products, and it has about 200,000 engines with SCR in place worldwide, the company says. Cummins also benefits from having an offshoot of the company -Cummins Emission Solutions -that is already in the business of designing and building SCR systems.

Its 2010 engines will still use EGR -just less of it. The base engine remains the same. However, now that it can re-tune its engines for optimal performance, Cummins has scrapped plans to develop a 16-litre ISX. Steve Charlton, vice-president of heavy-duty engineering with Cummins, says the higher displacement engine is no longer required to meet all the horsepower ratings the company plans to offer.

Mark Karrasch, a division manager with Cummins, says current test engines with the in-cylinder solution can be converted to carry SCR quite easily.

Detroit Diesel We caught up with David Siler, director of marketing with Detroit Diesel at a Sterling Trucks event in August. He said extensive field testing of Detroit Diesel engines with BlueTec (Daimler’s term for its SCR technology) is already well underway and going smoothly.

“We’re going to be launching our customer demonstration units, which will put 2010 BlueTec vehicles in customers’ hands by the fourth quarter of this year,” Siler said. “We want to make sure we have an optimal package before we deliver them, so we’re still going through extensive development and validation.”

He said the DD15 will remain much the same as it is today, but EGR levels will be dialed back allowing the company to fine-tune its performance parameters.

“But there will be no hardware changes to speak of,” he said. “All the changes will be electronic and downstream aftertreatment changes.”

Mack David McKenna, powertrain sales and marketing manager with Mack, described Mack’s progress to us at the Great American Trucking Show in late August.

“We’ve got field test units right now that we’ve had in service for almost seven months, and I’m going to say we’re averaging adding about one to 1.5 trucks into the test fleet every week,”McKenna said. “We’re certainly getting a comfortable number of trucks out there in various duty cycles.”

Mack had yet to deploy any test trucks in Canada, however its engines with SCR were holding up well in the upper peninsula of Michigan where they were hauling loads of 160,000 lbs, McKenna said.

He said the first Mack engines with SCR would be hitting Canadian roads by the end of September. Early results are showing improvements in power and fuel economy, McKenna said, adding horsepower will be increased in some of Mack’s 2010 engines thanks to its ability to produce NOx in-cylinder and tinker with engine settings to optimize performance.

Navistar The International MaxxForce engine continues to be refined to comply with EPA2010 emissions standards without SCR. International’s Tim Schick said the maturation of EGR technology has made for a smooth transition.

The 2010 engine will see EGR levels increase by about 10%,Schick said. The cooling capacity will be increased and in some applications the air intake will be enlarged, but highway trucks with International’s 2010 engine will look the same as they do today, Schick said.

“The only thing you will notice is that it will look a lot like a 2009 vehicle,” he insisted.

He noted the EGR valve will be housed in a water jacket to protect it from overheating. He also said refinements will be made to the combustion process: a five-stage injection cycle consisting of two pre-burns, a main burn and two post-burns will replace today’s three-stage injection process.

Currently, the MaxxForce’s fuel pressure is about 26,000 psi. That will be boosted to over 30,000 psi in 2010, Schick said. However, the engine’s compacted-iron graphite block is more than able to withstand the higher firing pressures, he added.

Paccar

Paccar will be introducing its MX 12.9-litre engine, based on the European DAF engine, to North America in 2010. Its engines will also use SCR, says Paccar’s Alan Treasure.

“Our engine program is progressing on schedule,” he said, adding field tests have been conducted in the Northwest Territories and the Canadian Rockies. “We have a really comprehensive testing program in many different applications and conditions, including in Canada.”

Paccar is building an engine plant in the US which is designed specifically to manufacture EPA2010-compliant engines, Treasure noted. Because it’s a brand new plant, “we don’t have any constraints with any manufacturing or tooling limitations,” he said.

Treasure said based on testing, customers will enjoy excellent fuel mileage and responsiveness as well as quiet operation.

Volvo

Volvo Trucks North America has about a dozen trucks in customer hands, spokesman James McNamara told Truck News in early September.

“Those are in addition to all the trucks we have in corporate testing and those are in addition to about 150,000 trucks we have in Europe running with SCR,” he said. “Right now, there’s not a lot of customer comments to report, because other then when they are adding the DEF to the vehicles, it’s transparent to them.”

The company expects fuel mileage improvements of 3% compared to non-SCR engines.

By mid-October, McNamara said Volvo will have accrued close to a million miles on SCR-equipped customer test vehicles.