The proposed amendments are aimed at redefining the class of bi-fuel vehicles to permit the simultaneous use of gas and petrol in gas mode. This submission follows the review by CLEPA members of the draft proposal (GRPE/2012/6).
Mr. Rijnders notes that in the UNECE website document 2012/7 was listed as pertaining to R.83. In fact this pertains to R.115. Mr. Seisler will contact Pierpaolo Cazzola (GRPE secretariat) to make the necessary change.
Mr. Harry Scheule (Continental) Amendment presents the CLEPA document Regulation R83 and document GRPE Working Document GRPE/2012/6 regarding the use of petrol in gas mode and its limitation for bi-fuel gas vehicles and the verification during type approval.
In Appendix 1 and 2 of GRPE/2012/6, it is proposed to determine the amount of consumed fuel during the type 1 test by measuring the weight of an additional external fuel tank for the gaseous fuel (NG or LPG or H2). From the CLEPA point of view this procedure might entail practical and safety problems during development and type approval. For that reason CLEPA proposes an alternative procedure in order to determine the fuel consumption of petrol and the gaseous fuel in the test cycle as an equivalent option as a new Appendix 3.
Alternative proposal by CLEPA
Comparison of fuel consumption has been made for engine management systems and the exhaust of the system.
What needs to be done by the car industry?
Advantage of the proposed method is:
AEGPL would support this change. But they would prefer an official test based on official data.
The discussion surrounds whether this method can be used for type approval because the data is provided by the manufacturer it is not necessarily good enough to use for type approval. Mr. Rijnders makes a point that a lot of this data may not give a good picture of the amount of energy consumed. It also is a complicated procedure to adopt. Mr. Dekker (TNO) indicates that the data from the manufacturer would have to be ‘trusted.’ For manufacturers the method is fine but not necessarily from a regulatory view. But it is agreed that the suggested method is an ‘elegant’ alternative to weighing the gas in an external cylinder. But Mr. Rijnders has some doubts about bringing this recommendation to the GRPE at this stage of its development.
There is a way of cross checking the petrol and gas values and adding them together: Portion of injection gasoline mass to portion of injection natural gas mass. The only requirement is to prove that the amount of injected petrol has to be lower than 20%.
This method would have to be justified as a good alternative at the GRPE. Mr. Scheule can work to improve the test, and that we would work in the GFV group for alternatives to this methodology (different than weighing-the-tank methodology). While there are concerns about safety these should not be the principle reasons for changing the test procedure. There is general agreement that this method is an ‘elegant’ solution and is an improvement over the weighing methodology and that it has merit. But some few questions still need to be answered and CLEPA will work to revise the method and satisfy questions at an upcoming GFV, but not necessarily in the short-term for the June GFV session. CLEPA will try to demonstrate that the method be made more robust from a type approval perspective. Mr. Schuele agrees that it is good to have the feedback from this group in order to refine the methodology. The proposal is much more likely to have success at the GRPE once a consensus is achieved at the GFV.