Contractor aids smog fight System
gives construction rigs fuel-burning efficiency

BEAUMONT - Teams of enormous yellow construction rigs rumbled across a vacant parcel of land south of Interstate 10, scraping and moving the brown dirt to make way for a 955-home development.

While some of the heavy-duty diesel scrapers and bulldozers shot streams of thick, black exhaust into the air, others appeared to emit far less at the Seneca Springs housing development.

That is because general contractor Don McCoy Corp. employed a new technology on some of the machines to burn cleaner and reduce construction-related emissions.

McCoy is an example of contractors trying to reduce the impact of their equipment on the atmosphere while also controlling costs by burning fuel more efficiently. McCoy began using the Combustion Catalyst System earlier this year.

"We're after the clean-air side of this thing," said Don McCoy, president of the corporation. "That was very important to us, and if there's a fuel savings, that's good, too."

McCoy said clean-air regulations are getting tougher on construction equipment. Significant housing developments require local cities to perform environmental impact reports, and a category measured is construction-related air quality.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, which includes Riverside County, reported that construction activities alone account for almost 9 percent of the area's overall pollution in 2003. In the meantime, aggressive building continues unabated in Riverside County.

Construction equipment accounts for 118 tons per day of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter in the four-county Southern California area, while all sources of pollution contribute to 1,380 tons per day, according to the air quality district.

Various types of construction equipment, categorized as off-road vehicles, "are definitely a significant source of air pollution," said Sam Atwood, AQMD spokesman.

The district administers the Carl Moyer Program, which offers funding to contractors - up to 85 percent of the cost - to repower engines on older diesel equipment.

But the cost of repowering an entire fleet of heavy-duty construction rigs can be staggering for contractors. McCoy said the cost of the Combustion Catalyst System is one of the things that attracted him to it because he could afford it for more machines. A new scraper can cost more than $1 million.

The system, which sits inside a yellow box, is installed near the turbocharger on the engine and works like a front-end catalytic converter.

Microscopic metals in the catalyst, such as platinum, are channeled into the engine's air-intake system. The catalyst then converts to an aerosol which is sent to the engine's combustion chamber.

The system reportedly reduced diesel particulate matter by 43 percent, nitrogen oxides by 14 percent and hydrocarbons by 58 percent during tests performed by Fullerton-based Olson-Ecologic Engine Testing Lab.

RECAT, the Perris-based distributor of the system, also claims soot was reduced by 80 percent and fuel consumption cut by 5 percent to 15 percent.

"Going forward, (McCoy) not only has cleaner air at his job sites, he's also saving 26 cents per gallon for gasoline that he's burning," said Mike Avery, a RECAT spokesman.

Learn more about Emission Technology at: www.emissionstech.com