ESW Canada Inc. (ESW Canada), a wholly owned subsidiary of Environmental Solutions Worldwide Inc. (ESW), has received verification notice from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for ThermaCat Active Level III Plus catalyst system, effective April 28, 2009. The verification of ThermaCat is for various 1996 to 2009 diesel powered off-road mobile applications. This system can be used on both tracked and rubber tire equipment powered by various medium/heavy-duty diesel off-road engines.
With this new CARB Executive Order DE-09-010, the ThermaCat system becomes the first verified mobile off-road Level III Plus diesel particulate filter system to integrate a passive diesel particulate filter (DPF) with company’s proprietary active real-time diesel fuel based exothermic regeneration components.
The ThermaCat system, as verified, proved capable of minimizing diesel particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO) and hydro carbon (HC) in excess of 85% while meeting the nationwide stringent nitrogen dioxide (NO2) limitations. This new NO2 limit, which came into effect on January 1, 2009, needs that all verified diesel emission retrofit technologies sold and deployed in North America, must not increase NO2 emissions by over 20%.
With rigorous emissions lab testing, the ThermaCat system has displayed its ability to monitor engine exhaust temperature and pressure, determine when the needed conditions are met and create a diesel fuel based exothermic temperature increase into the DPF. This repeated, controlled process of regenerating the collected PM stored in the DPF in real-time engine/equipment operation lowers the systems backpressure. By doing so, the ThermaCat maintains optimized emissions reductions in cold or inconsistent duty cycle applications without the requirement for operator interface, expensive equipment downtime or daily maintenance intervals. This new approach gives the ThermaCat Active Level III Plus catalyst system a very large potential cross section and demographic of applications.
On July 6, 2007 CARB has adopted a regulation aimed at minimizing toxic and cancer-causing diesel emissions from the state’s anticipated 180,000 off-road vehicles utilized in construction, mining, airport ground support and other industries. This new regulation as reported outlines a potential $3.5 billion retrofit market over its lifetime.
On February 17, 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed by President Obama. This $789 billion stimulus legislation program enables for $300 million in grants to be administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) program. This grant is available to heavy duty diesel on road vehicles and off road equipment owners to retrofit their engines to minimize diesel emissions.
David J. Johnson, ESW’s president and chief executive officer, stated “This first ThermaCat Level III Plus Executive Order marks what we believe to be the beginning of several CARB verifications and is an extremely significant accomplishment for our company. Verifying emission control technologies that meet increasingly stringent CARB and EPA regulations is a critical aspect of our business plan and essential to our customers, partners and distributors. Moving forward, we anticipate announcing sales and future product verifications for on-road, off-road and marine/locomotive applications.”
Johnson added, “It is our belief that with our diversified emission control technologies and our CARB and EPA recognized engine and emissions testing ‘Tech Center’ operated by our wholly owned subsidiary ESW America, we have positioned the company to take advantage of the growing and well funded diesel retrofit market. We consider the company to be well situated to address existing and future legislative and regulatory requirements.”
ESW is a Canada-based designer, developer, manufacturer and seller of environmental technologies and testing services.