Vestergaard Company has an ambition to provide cleaner and greener deicing. The Elephant BETA deicer has been around since the early 80’s and continues to be a workhorse in major airports around the world. Vestergaard Company now introduces a plug-in hybrid version of the iconic deicer.
With a fully charged battery, the new plug-in hybrid deicer will be able to deice 15-20 aircraft without running the truck’s chassis engine. All is run electrically.
“The push has been on for a long time at environmentally-conscious airports”, notes Stefan Vestergaard, CEO of Vestergaard Company.
“ We took on the challenge at Vestergaard to explore possibilities to reduce emissions in deicing and we believe that we have at the same time found significant economical savings for our customers using this new technology”.
Technically, Vestergaard Company has equipped the Elephant® BETA with an OEM lithium-ion battery, which charges either via an on-board charger or via a generator on the PTO of the chassis diesel engine. Electric motors run movements, spraying and low-speed maneuvering around the aircraft with diesel engine turned off.
Operators can drive to gate areas using the truck’s diesel engine, turn off the engine and perform the deicing jobs. Without the diesel engine, small particle pollution is all but eliminated from gate areas and noise levels are reduced. The operator can drive short distances between gates using the electric motor.
Likewise, on remote pads, the operator can use the diesel engine to drive to the pad, then shut off the engine and continue to perform deicing operations using only the electric motors and the battery.
Fluid is heated with diesel in the current version, however, as soon as the desired temperature is reached, the heater turns off, and temperature drop is only about 1 degree Celsius per hour. In future versions, larger battery capacity will enable heating without diesel.
