Equipmake has reached a key milestone in its Project Coeus collaboration with Perkins to develop an advanced hybrid e-powertrain for off-highway applications. The companies have announced that their co-developed hydrogen hybridized industrial open power unit (IOPU) has completed extensive development testing and is now being fitted into a Terex Ecotec TDS 820 high-performance shredder for testing in the field.
The work is the first application of Project Coeus and is being carried out by Perkins’ Customer Machine Engineering Team at its research and development facility in Peterborough. The demonstrator will undergo testing at Perkins’ proving site to assess the technology, including its ability to meet the machine’s peak load demands and transient response requirements.
At the core of the hybrid power unit is an entirely new spoke architecture heavy-duty electric motor, custom designed and developed in-house at Equipmake’s facility in Snetterton in Norfolk, UK. The company has been responsible for integrating this new motor-generator unit (MGU) – which including the company’s silicon carbide inverter technology and all associated power electronics – with a spark-ignited Perkins engine to boost performance. Based on the Perkins 1200 Series platform, the 1206 hydrogen hybrid IOPU delivers a combined 397kW (508hp) and 1,938Nm at 1,200-1,500rpm.
Packaging this level of electrified performance in a unit designed as a direct replacement for an existing diesel IOPU is a key aim of the project. The plug-and-play solution is intended to help off-highway OEMs transition to lower-carbon fuels and electrification without requiring fundamental changes to their machines.
Led by Perkins, a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar, Project Coeus is a three-year program involving Perkins, Equipmake and Loughborough University’s Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering. The project received £11.14m (US$14.78m) in UK government funding through the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) in 2023, including £3.24m (US$4.3m) awarded to Equipmake.
The project focuses on four fuels – ethanol, methanol, biomethane and hydrogen – all of which use spark ignition. Perkins is developing a configurable spark-ignited combustion platform on which the hybrid system is based.
Ian Foley, Equipmake CEO, said, “This is a proud moment for everyone at Equipmake. Our role in Project Coeus has been to deliver a custom-designed heavy-duty electric motor – paired with our own silicon carbide inverter technology and all associated power electronics – and integrate that with a Perkins engine. The resulting hybrid industrial open power unit can cope with the extreme demands of off-highway applications and is packaged so it can sit within a genuine drop-in replacement for a diesel power unit. Moving from the test cell into a machine as demanding as a high-performance shredder is exactly the proving ground this technology needs.
“Off-highway OEMs want to decarbonize without compromising productivity or re-engineering their machines from scratch, and hybridization combined with lower carbon fuels such as hydrogen offers a practical route to doing that. This milestone shows the strength of UK engineering collaboration, and how the electrification expertise we have built in sectors such as bus and coach can be applied to the global off-highway market.”
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