Filed under: Natural Gas, On Two Wheels, Africa
Egypt converting motorcycles to natural gas
On many roads of the world, motorcycles greatly outnumber cars and a good deal of those two-wheelers use old 2-stroke technology, which is almost always significantly dirtier than newer 4-stroke engine designs. Count Egypt among those locations, with an estimated 300,000 2-strokers running down busy metropolitan streets, belching out plenty of oil-filled blue smoke along the way. Naturally, this is a problem, so Industry Canada and the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency have jointly started a $1.4 million project to retrofit these motorcycles to run on natural gas.
A Canadian company called Yugo-Tech (no, not that Yugo) and the Egyptian Light Transportation Manufacturing Company have created the necessary technology to make these conversions a reality, using numerous sensors and computers to precisely meter the operation of the older engines. Compressed natural gas burns significantly cleaner than gasoline and the Egyptian authorities hope that this will be a first step toward introducing much more stringent emissions regulations in the country.
[Source: The New Cafe Racer Society]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MBM 10:02AM (12/15/2008)
It's a little hard to say what all this will accomplish. Typical two-stroke engines pollution profiles have far more to do with how much unburned oil exits the exhaust and far less to do with the fuel that is powering them. Due to their design some unburned fuel is exhausted as well which might be what a gaseous conversion might help mitigate but any improvement would be relatively small in reducing exhaust smoke which is almost entirely composed of unburned or partially burned lubricating oil. Seems like a lot of trouble and expense for little real return.
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Phil L. 11:21AM (12/15/2008)
Am I the only one bothered by a natural gas tank mounted next to a muffler? Not that there's a good place to mount compressed tanks on a motorcycle.
The source article doesn't mention how they're handing engine lubrication. Does anyone know if this system uses some kind of oil injection?
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rick 12:46PM (12/16/2008)
Maybe this story was sourced from the Onion.
For as much as it costs to convert one bike, they could probably buy a Chinese 125 4 stroke.
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