Pentair and McCulla work together to curb greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-based fuels

Pentair and McCulla have initiated McCulla’s new Pentair Biogas Upgrading plant that will produce bio-CNG to fuel their fleet of trucks, providing a much-needed alternative to diesel.

Haffmans B.V., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pentair Water Process Technology B.V., (“Pentair”), and a leading global provider of sustainable solutions, including biogas upgrading technologies and carbon capture technologies, and McCulla, a leading provider of ambient, chilled and frozen logistics solutions, launched a new biogas upgrading plant that is enabling McCulla to fuel their fleet of trucks with Compressed Natural Gas (bio-CNG).  

The Pentair Biogas Upgrading System, Pentair BioCompact, has capacity for 450 standard m³ of biogas to be processed into biomethane every hour, enabling McCulla to operate their new green fleet of ten CNG trucks. The trucks are refueled directly at the company’s biomethane filling point. The organic material used to produce the sustainable fuel come from food waste collected from 41 chain supermarkets throughout Northern Ireland.

Commenting on the recent launch of the plant, Roland Folz, Pentair Food & Beverage Global Business Unit Leader, noted: “We are excited to be working with McCulla to help lead the refrigeration transport sector toward a more sustainable model. The transport sector has historically been dependent on fossil fuels and therefore is a contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. With innovations in biogas upgrading, the opportunity to mitigate the damaging effects of carbon emissions generated from fossil-based fuels is now within reach.”   

When compared with diesel, the benefits of Bio-CNG are promising. A 2020 transportation research study from Science Direct, which utilized validated models, compared a conventional diesel-fueled heavy goods vehicle with one that runs on compressed gas (CG): either CNG or biomethane for their transport performance, costs and carbon emissions.

The study found that the vehicle running on biomethane emitted approximately 78.2% lower equivalent carbon emissions than the diesel, and the vehicle running on CNG emitted 12.3% lower carbon emissions.