A mock-up shows the FSX FastBlast diesel particulate filter cleaning unit will look like when installed on a service truck
Meeting Tier 4 emissions requirements is still a challenge for some equipment operators. In particular, some who have been keeping pre-Tier 4 equipment in usage for as long as possible have to quickly catch up on what’s required and how to perform new maintenance tasks, such as cleaning diesel particulate filters.
At ConExpo-Con/Agg 2020 in Las Vegas this March, Jeremy Anderson, national sales manager
Jeremy Anderson, national sales manager, FSX Equipment
at FSX Equipment Inc., will deliver a presentation titled “DPF Cleaning: Protecting Your Tier 4 Investment.” The session will examine aftertreatment systems, methods for cleaning DPFs, and warning signs to watch out for.
A learning curve
“There is a lot that can be gleaned from what the industry has learned on the road with these after treatment devices,” Anderson told Service Truck Magazine in advance of the session. “There was a steep learning curve, there were a lot of pitfalls, and there were a lot of misunderstandings. There were a lot of misconceptions in the industry about the aftertreatment systems in regards to how to deal with them, how to maintain them properly and what do they do.”
Tier 4 is latest in a series of emissions standards for non-road diesel engines enacted by the Environmental Protection Agency starting in the 1990s. Tier 4 final, which took effect in 2015, reduced particulate and oxides of nitrogen levels by 90 percent over the Tier 3 standards.
While the Tier 4 requirements have been in place for several years, off-road equipment is not replaced as often as on-road equipment, Anderson noted. As such, a lot of older off-road equipment is still running without exhaust after treatment systems. But no matter how long ones tries to keep a grandfathered-in piece of pre-Tier 4 equipment in use, eventually it will need to be replaced.
“That’s when the learning curve starts for these fleet managers that have to deal with the service of these after treatment systems,” Anderson said. “So I’m going to be speaking about a lot of the things that we’ve learned that have happened with on-road diesel trucks. What we’ve learned so far can be applied to the off-road industry to help them. I’m also going to be covering the components of the after treatment system.”
Avoid “headaches down the road.”
As service truck operators will often be the ones performing this maintenance, the presentation should be of particular interest to service truck operators and fleet managers with service and mechanic trucks as part of their operations, Anderson said.
“One of the things that’s a big mystery is how much preventative maintenance do I need to do on these things to avoid costs later on,” he said. “It’s so critical with the after treatment system to understand that it’s just like tires and oil. You have to maintain, you have to have a preventative maintenance schedule for the after treatment system or the headaches down the road are going to be more costly. That’s the gist of this presentation — to help them get a grasp of the entire after treatment system and then how do we do preventative maintenance to make sure that we’re not caught blindsided with a huge expense and we’re replacing components rather than cleaning components.”
After treatment systems are composed of two catalysts and a trap, the diesel particulate filter, or DPF. The system is very expensive to replace and can create unscheduled downtime. Anderson hopes that fleet managers recognize that if any component failure happens in the engine, it is a red flag to check the after treatment system to ensure it hasn’t been contaminated with oil, coolant or excess fuel.
Thorough DPF cleaning a must
The second key topic — methods for cleaning DPFs — also draws directly from FSX Equipment’s experience. The company has been working on solutions in that field since clean diesel particulate filters were first introduced by public municipalities with government grants over 15 years ago.
“We’ve tried every kind of cleaning there is out there and we found that pneumatic cleaning is by far the safest and most effective,” Anderson said. “To do it right, you have to scan the filter and catch every cell and there’s 4,000 to 5,000 cells on every filter and you’ve got to clean them all. You also need to address the DPF from both sides of the filter. When you address the filter with a high volume of air and high pressure combined, you’re able to break up and loosen a majority, if not all, of the hardened ash that gets compacted and cemented deep down inside a DPF. That is the key to cleaning up a DPF properly.”
FastBlast coming
Headquartered in Granite Falls, Wash., 45 miles north of Seattle, FSX has long sold an in-shop DPF cleaning unit called the TrapBlaster. Seeing that increasing number of new off-road Tier 4 engine users, FSX is poised to introduce a portable version that could be mounted on a service truck, the FastBlast.
“It’s designed to do repairs way out there in the mines or the gas fields where you’ve got miles of dirt road and you got heavy equipment that can’t easily get to the shop or it’s not very practical to go way out to the equipment, pull the DPF off, and then travel way back to the shop, clean it, and then travel back again to install it and then return. That’s four trips with the same service truck that is heading out to do repairs.”
The name is tongue-in-cheek — the FastBlast doesn’t clean filters any faster than previous models, but since it’s attached to a moving vehicle its land speed is much higher than a stationary unit. But a mobile unit can be used while the service truck performs other repairs and maintenance on the same trip to the jobsite. Anderson is quick to tout the company’s bi-directional air scanning technology and the visual cleaning process.
“We felt it was very important to have a visual cleaning process because every filter is different,” Anderson said. “It’s got a different number of hours, a different operator, different amount of idling time and different engines. It has to do with watching a filter to make sure that you know it’s done, regardless of what has been injected into it from the engine. That visible cleaning process will allow the operator to easily see when a filter is done cleaning.”
“DPF Cleaning: Protecting Your Tier 4 Investment” takes place March 13, 3-4 p.m., in Ballroom C at the Westgate Resort & Casino.
For more information on ConExpo-Con/Agg 2020, which runs March 10-14 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, visit www.conexpoconagg.com.
— Matt Jones
Matt Jones is a freelance writer based in Fredericton, N.B.