Scania introduces diesel recycling system

About 5 600 litres of diesel will be reused annually after truck manufacturer, Scania, installed a diesel recycling system at its engine assembly plant in Södertälje, Sweden. This ensures that 200-litre barrels of diesel, removed from the engines after testing, will not be discarded.

This will have numerous benefits, as process technician Sinisa Jakovljevic points out: “The diesel we save is enough to fuel a Scania Job Express coach driving a round trip between Södertälje and Stockholm for a year. It’s good for the environment, too, as diesel fumes are reduced, as is the risk of fire.”

The engine assembly improvement team found, after evaluating different possible ways to handle fuel more efficiently, that the answer lay in a closed system without handling, together with 100 percent recycling.

The diesel is emptied from the engine, flows through pipes to a tank and is cleaned by a filter. The fuel can then be used again as more engines are fuelled.

In just three years, the investment in the recycling system will have paid for itself, in part because the engine assembly department no longer has to pay an external company to dispose of the fuel, but also because the diesel is reused.

Pjerin Marjakaj, workshop technician at the engine assembly line, says: “It was a challenge to connect the drain to our existing systems, in order to return the diesel to the tank in the basement. We also needed to consider how the fuel was affected. The system was perfected in cooperation with the research and development department.”