Conversion of a Diesel engine into a natural gas engine: An environment friendly alternative for commercial vehicles?

The reduction of CO2-emissions is one of the biggest challenges in future and a requirement for future propulsion systems for passenger cars and for commercial vehicles. There are a lot of concepts available, which can help to reduce the CO2-emissions. One possibility is to use alternative fuels like compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas. CNG or LNG has the big advantage of a reduced CO2 emission. There is also the possibility to generate the natural gas by usage of renewable energies. This could be done with e.g. crops, powerto-gas, landfill-gas. Isuzu Motors Germany converted in the last years an existing Diesel engine to a CNG engine, which is able to cover the power and torque requirements of an already in-use Diesel-engine. The following article shows the steps of the conversion of a Diesel driven engine into a CNG driven engine. The article contains first results of the investigation of the CNG engine and also a comparison between the Diesel engine and the CNG engine.