Gasrec upgrades biomethane station in Northamptonshire, England
Gasrec has completed a £1 million upgrade to its flagship refueling facility at the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT), to meet the growing demand of transport operators making the transition to bio-LNG and bio-CNG. A team of engineers have installed new fuel dispensers, new supply lines and a new fuel management system, along with greater remote operability for the site – which has the capacity to refuel up to 700 trucks per day. Gasrec has also introduced its own fuel cards to provide better information to its customers and to prepare for expansion of its station network.
“This investment reinforces our confidence in the growing demand for trucks running on renewable biomethane, which now represent nearly 5% of all new tractor unit registrations in the UK,” said Rob Wood, Chief Executive of Gasrec. “We have seen a huge influx of new customers at DIRFT over the course of 2020. This demand has also led us to invest in our supply chain and more than double the number of LNG road tankers in our fleet. These latest upgrades will ensure DIRFT continues to hit our strict targets for safety, sustainability, refueling speed and uptime, plus it means we are best positioned to refuel the latest generations of vehicles.”
Situated close to J18 of the M1, DIRFT offers 24/7 access to fleets from across the UK, Ireland and the continent. It houses seven dispensing points, including four pumps and four storage tanks. It uses an independent supply pipe network to different dispensers, so in the rare event of a failure on one line, it can still operate via the others.
New systems installed measure every refueling procedure with pin-point accuracy, including when it commences, how long it takes and the gas condition throughout the process – providing valuable management data to help Gasrec optimize the speed of refueling and the flow of vehicles through the facility.
The company projects that one-third of the UK’s 44-ton heavy truck market will have transitioned to natural gas within the next seven years, with approximately 39,000 gas-powered HGVs on UK roads.
