Leading national rental business L Lynch Plant Hire is equipping all of its new articulated dump trucks and dozers with the FuelActive clean fuel delivery system, following extensive on-site trials. The company predicts that it will remove 970 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere and cut £370,000 in fuel costs from its ADT fleet alone, in a full operating year.

Having been convinced of the uptime benefits on previous installations, the company was keen to verify FuelActive’s fuel economy and sustainability claims, conducting a controlled trial on one of its own earthmoving projects, where five machines were equipped with the FuelActive system and five were not.

“We had 10 identical ADTs, all doing the same route, being loaded by the same machine, at the same weight. That enabled us to be completely fair,” said James Bardon, Head of Major Projects and Innovation at L Lynch Plant Hire.

“We used OEM telemetry to compare 960 data points over 5,000 operating hours. The machines with the FuelActive system averaged a 3.6% fuel saving. That’s equal to a £9,000 reduction in fuel over a year across the 10 trucks, taking 20 tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere.”

The test was so successful, that Lynch has decided to fit FuelActive across a growing number of machines in the fleet. It has already seen 50 units installed, with more to come.

“All new ADTs and dozers will have FuelActive installed before they are sent to site,” said Mr Bardon. “We are also reviewing the installation for excavators and other equipment and expect to install these later this year.”

While fuel savings and a reduction in CO2 emissions are welcomed by both the plant hirer and its customers, Lynch initially opted to fit the FuelActive system as a way to reduce downtime on site.

“We did have a problem at the time, from AdBlue systems and contaminated fuels,” said Mr Bardon. FuelActive promised to eliminate this problem, by only taking the cleanest fuel from the tank, so we had to investigate it.”

FuelActive is a unique fuel pick-up pipe that can be installed in any fuel tank, across all types of on and off highway machinery. Whereas a conventional OEM pick-up will take fuel from the bottom of the tank, the FuelActive system uses a floating pick-up, that ensures that only the cleanest possible fuel is delivered to the engine’s fuel injection system.

“On some projects, for whatever the reason, the fuel has been contaminated with water and the machines now are so sensitive, especially if they are running SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction). Any small amount of water can bring that machine to a stop,” said Mr Bardon.

“That leads to downtime for our customer, which is what we are trying to avoid. From the instant that we installed FuelActive, we have never had a case of fuel contamination stopping a machine that is fitted with the system from operating.

“However, we also discovered that there was a fuel saving to be had, as the system is always pulling clean fuel from the tank, allowing the engine to operate more efficiently, which was an added bonus. Sustainability is at the heart of everything that we do at Lynch and we are always striving for marginal gains across the fleet”.

“FuelActive has given us the potential to save thousands of pounds for our customers and tonnes of CO2. The beauty of the product is that it works alongside other technologies that we are using to reduce emissions and is very easy to install with a short return on investment.”