Peterson Power Helps Work Boats Meet California Emissions Requirements

Replacing the prime engine in a seafaring vessel to meet modern emissions laws can be a major challenge. Clearances inside a ship’s hull are cramped in the best of circumstances and almost unbearably tight in the worst, so replacing an outdated engine can seem near impossible. However, Peterson marine customers using Cat 3500 series engines have an additional option: they can purchase an Emissions Upgrade Group (EUG) parts kit and have Peterson Power Systems install it for them... Without removing their old engines!
 
Marine Engine PSSR Randy Richter describes the benefits of EUG kits: “Putting a new engine in an old ship requires major changes to the ship’s hull,” Randy says. “Caterpillar knew its customers weren’t thrilled about this, so their engineers analyzed certain popular engines to determine which parts they could swap to lower the engine’s emissions output without changing the core.” Eventually, Caterpillar came up with EUG kits: each one includes an upgraded turbocharger, ECM, nozzles, cylinder packs... Everything needed to make an older engine run as clean as a new one.
 
“When all the new components are installed, the old engine meets today’s requirements. The customer doesn’t have to take his vessel out of the water, get the hull cut, and have the old engine removed to fit an engine with a different footprint than the one it replaces,” Randy explains.
 
Caterpillar makes EUG kits for several engine models, and they’ve been verified by the Air Resource Board (ARB), meaning that the State recognizes them as emissions reducers and considers a post-EUG engine to be Tier compliant.
 
Peterson recently finished the first EUG overhauls in North America to be completed without direct supervision from Caterpillar. “Cat engineers have been working with dealers pretty closely on these overhauls for the past year or two,” Randy said, “but we’re now at the point where they trust us to do everything correctly and we can offer this valuable service to our customers—they’ve been waiting for this service for a while now and are excited to overhaul their engines.”
 
To learn more about Peterson Power’s marine service capabilities, visit: http://goo.gl/cdQo1