Trucks are an essential part of our world; transporting goods around the clock, from massive turbine blades to coffee and tea for your morning caffeine fix. These deliveries are expected to increase by 40% by 2045. As much as we can be grateful for next-day delivery, it comes at an environmental cost.
In the United States, transportation is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for around 28% according to the EPA and almost a quarter of that is attributed to trucking. Most of the emissions come from burning petroleum-based fuel used to power the trucks, often from a truck that isn’t even moving. Overnight idling of trucks accounts for 11 million tons of CO2 emissions, and it comes at a major expense of $3 billion of unnecessary fuel burning.
Blackburn Energy, a startup based in the Greater Boston area, is on a mission to help solve these problems by electrifying everything possible on diesel trucks. In this feature video, CEO Andrew Amigo explains how the company put a 21st-century overlay on 19th-century technology with the development of the RelGen® system. Using MATLAB and Simulink in their development, the team is enabling trucking companies to reduce CO2 emissions by harvesting wasted kinetic energy from the drive shaft rotation and using it to power liftgates and long-haul sleeper cabs. With several possible applications in the future, Blackburn is creating a greener world one delivery at a time and gifting all of us cleaner air to breathe.
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