The journey started this morning (June 6th) at Messe Berlin, where participants took a shuttle bus-provided by GASAG. Later on, they received some hand-outs about the history and facts of Berlin City as well as a short introduction about the tour venues to be visited.
The first stop of the tour was the Berlin’s municipal waste management company facility. There, Renate Lemke, fleet manager of the company, illustrated how they process the daily waste produced in over 890 km2.
In 1996, BSR received its first NGV. In 2002 it started using natural gas fuelled trucks to collect the 1.3 million tonnes of waste that are being produced every year. Now it has 93 CNG powered Daimler trucks which integrate a total fleet of over 300 units.
What is more, the firm plans to extend its NGV fleet up to 140 vehicles and also aims to increase its infrastructure with a new fast filling station to be inaugurated this year. The trucks can currently rely on a regular fast filling station and a mobile one. The fuelling process takes place once a day, usually before 7 am, when the prices are tangibly lower, and lasts 7 minutes.
It is worth mentioning that BSR will start to refuel its trucks with biogas generated from raw material waste collected by their own trucks in 2012.
The tour guide, R. B. Giesel, also pointed out several interesting venues along the way. One of those was a CNG fuelling station that has an underground storage of 1 billion m3 of natural gas.
Second stop
The tour continued with a visit to TOTAL Heerstrasse station, which sells CNG, hydrogen, LPG, gasoline and diesel. Arnaud Gregoire, the Alternative Project manager of Total Deutschland GmbH, explained how the hydrogen fuelling system works, showed the CNG compressors, dispensers and storage system, as well as the rest of the facility.
He also pointed out that the station mainly provides CNG to light-duty NGVs, whereas GASAG, the main NG supplier in Berlin, delivers the gaseous fuel with H-gas quality. Even though, the station services heavy-duty vehicles too.
What is to come
Tomorrow (Tuesday 7th), the Expo and the Workshops will be officially inaugurated. Besides those main activities, a cocktail reception, the NGVA Europe Board and General Meetings, the NGV2012 Bologna launch and the erdgas mobil – BoD-Meeting will be held.
Everything’s ready to open the doors to NGV world.
Please check www.ngv2011berlin.com for further information about the event and follow the journalistic coverage of it at NGVJournal.com.
