Since the industrial revolution, the term heavy industry often conjures up images of looming steel mills, massive towers, and intimidating pieces of machinery.
Even in today’s modern world, those images lurk as steel mills have been transformed into mental pictures of oil refineries and large mining operations.
Additionally, industrial sites pose considerable challenges and societal concerns ranging from natural resource depletion to water pollution to high emissions output.
However, one company supported by the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR), Emissions-Based Maintenance (EBM), is aiming to address these environmental concerns while simultaneously increasing the efficiency of heavy industry, which plays a key role in Utah’s economy.
“CO2 output and fuel consumption correlate with each other,” said Jeramiah Forbush, president of EBM. “As you reduce CO2, you also reduce fuel consumption. It’s a win-win.”
While Utah boasts a relatively diverse economy, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction continue to make up a large part of the state’s economic landscape, especially in rural Utah. Additionally, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the railroad played a pivotal role in the state’s economic growth, earning the state the moniker “Crossroads of the West.” Transportation, including by rail, continues to play an important role in Utah’s economy.
In fact, according to World Trade Center Utah, 44.6 percent of Utah’s $11.6 billion in exports in 2017 were oil and gas, minerals and ores, petroleum and coal, metal, or transportation equipment, all of which include heavy industry components.
Heavy industry sectors often use high horsepower diesel engines, EBM’s current primary focus. EBM works with heavy industry sectors—including large mining, railroad locomotives, stationary power generation, mass transportation, and even marine applications—to improve engine combustion efficiency through improved maintenance practices.
Through their patent-pending technology, which was developed in part through a USTAR grant, EBM improves the efficiencies of large diesel engines using automated inputs from the engine and emissions sensors, resulting not only in reduced fuel costs, increased engine life, and improved total cost of ownership for an individual firm, but also reduces emissions output and pollution.
Reducing emissions output and improving air quality, according to EBM, is important to both the clients they work with and the greater public.
For example, most mining operations in Utah are underground. In order to ensure worker safety, maintaining healthy air quality in the mines is essential, but especially challenging when large diesel engines are operating. As a result, EBM’s technology not only helps the engines run better, but also helps companies ensure their mine air quality meets or exceeds regulatory requirements.
“At mines across Utah and the world, air quality is extremely important and using fuel more efficiently will help improve the environment. Underground mines are required to monitor air quality and ventilate air flow to deliver clean air to mine workers,” said Forbush. “We’ve had a ton of the success with the mines here in Utah and have expanded our operations as a result.
For large diesel engines, even small increases in efficiency make a drastic difference. Increasing an engine’s efficiency by just five percent helps save nearly $60,000 in fuel and reduces CO2 output by 218 tons annually per engine.
“These are huge, 2,000-plus horsepower engines that consume 60 gallons of fuel an hour and are running 7,500 hours a year or so,” said Forbush. “As you can imagine, the ROI is astronomical, not only in fuel savings, but in pollution reduction as well.”
EBM’s technology, while still in its early commercialization stages, is already producing promising results. It routinely improves engine efficiency in excess of the five to seven percent targets set by EBM. The company estimates that they have already helped save 80 million gallons of fuel and $240 million in fuel and operating costs, and eliminated an impressive 1.8 billion pounds of CO2 output.
While EBM is still working to scale up their operations, the company has already seen some promising wins. Most recently, they worked with the Department of Energy National Laboratory where they evaluated new emissions sensing technology in separate projects in Asia and Africa. Both projects demonstrated that EBM technology successfully improved the performance of large mining haul trucks, and saw significant emissions and fuel consumption savings. EBM also has ongoing developmental projects in the United States.
To learn more about EBM, visit www.ebmpros.com. To learn more about other USTAR-supported companies, visit ustar.org
