To actively implement the state’s policy of carbon reduction and emission abatement, ASIMCO Shanxi, as China’s leading manufacturer of cylinder blocks and heads in heavy-duty truck industry, seizes the market opportunities for the development of the new fuel engines and makes attempts at transforming traditional commercial vehicle engine business.

The development of the new fuel engines and electric vehicles is a new trend of the heavy-duty truck industry. As a new form of fuel, methanol, which is produced by using carbon monoxide and hydrogen in the industrial exhaust, can not only store wind energy and solar energy in the form of liquid methanol to facilitate the storage and transportation of hydrogen, but also store the wind energy and solar energy in the form of chemical energy during the production of green methanol to ensure the zero emission. Therefore, methanol is a very clean energy material. As a liquid form of energy in normal temperature, methanol is convenient and safe in the course of refilling and transportation, so it’s called the “liquid sunlight”. If compared to gasoline, Methanol has half of its calorific value but 1/4 of its price. Given its obvious cost advantage, methanol is one of the effective ways to achieve the carbon neutrality. Thus, methanol fuel has become the preferred solution for China’s automobile giants in their efforts to achieve the transformation of new fuel engines of commercial vehicles.

As entrusted the customer, ASIMCO Camshaft adopted the 3D printing sand-core technology to develop the new cylinder head of internal combustion engine and add hydrogen at different proportions to methanol as the fuel. The design optimized the cylinder head, water jacket, air passage and fuel system while the structure of traditional internal combustion engine remained unchanged. During the product design phase, the company’s technicians were deeply involved in the design of product structure and provided 36 suggestions about optimizing product structure for the customer, thus receiving the customer’s high recognition. This project of 3D printing sand-core cylinder heads was completed in two batches. To be specific, the company completed the trial- production and production of over ten samples and met the test requirements for appearance, internal cavity, dimension, function and material, and has recently delivered the sample to the customer.

This project has not merely achieved the zero emission and supported the implementation of the state’s policy of carbon reduction and emission abatement, but also used the innovative sand-core technique to increase the productivity of core assembly and reduce the scrap rate of sand cores. With the new technique, the company can efficiently produce the cylinder heads while the size error of water jackets is well controlled. What’s more, the casting error is no more than 1mm, thus greatly increasing the precision of the casting size. This technique will boost the company’s high-quality development in the future.