The Queensland, Australia Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) is ordering Cougar Energy to keep its pilot Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) plant near Kingaroy closed until the Government is assured that groundwater resources are protected. (Earlier post.) This follows advice received by the department on 13 July from Cougar Energy that water quality tests taken on 29 June detected benzene and toluene in groundwater monitoring bores close to the plant.

Underground Coal Gasification is a new technology approved for limited trial in Queensland at three sites, under the supervision of a scientific expert panel.

The department will also direct Cougar Energy along with Carbon Energy Ltd and Linc Energy, which operate Underground Coal Gasification trial plants at Chinchilla where contamination issues have also been reported, to carry out Environmental Evaluations of their plants.

This will require the companies to provide detailed information about their water quality monitoring, which will determine whether their pilot projects should be permitted to continue.

Carbon Energy failed to report a discharge of contaminated water from their plant to a nearby creek in November, and Linc Energy reported an exceedance of salt levels in groundwater.

DERM Director General John Bradley said the department would require urgent action in relation to these matters and the Evaluation results would be reviewed by the Government’s independent expert panel.

This Panel has been appointed to assess and report on the technical, environmental and social impacts of the Underground Coal Gasification industry and if it is not satisfied that these projects can resume operations without environmental harm, the pilot projects will not be given approval to continue.

The department is particularly concerned about multiple reports by Cougar Energy of benzene and toluene in ground water near their Kingaroy plant.

—John Bradley

Rural property owners within a two kilometer radius of the UCG plant, and two kilometers of Plantation bore, are being advised not to use water from their bores for human consumption or stock watering until tests confirm there is no further contamination.

The department has begun an investigation into whether Cougar Energy has breached its Environmental Authority (license conditions) and whether it has caused environmental harm. The maximum penalty for a wilful breach of the Environmental Authority is A$1 million (US$867,000) for a company, and A$200,000 or two years imprisonment for an individual. The maximum penalty for causing serious environmental harm is A$2,082,500 for a company and A$416,500 or five years imprisonment for an individual.

Nikkei. Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will participate in a pilot electric vehicle car sharing program in the city of Kyoto.

Seven Nissan LEAFs and Mitsubishi i-MiEVs will be used in the project. Horiba Ltd. will provide measuring instruments as part of an effort to study ways to improve safety.

Charging stations set up in Kyoto will be networked so that participants in the electric-car-sharing program will be able to find the locations of such facilities on their cellular phones.

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. unveiled a newly developed 1.2-liter engine, the HR12DDR, which aims to achieve the lowest level of fuel consumption in the world for gasoline-powered cars while delivering power output equivalent to that of a 1.5L engine and CO₂ emissions of 95 grams per kilometer (New European Drive Cycle).

The engine will first be mounted on the new Micra (known as March in other markets) in the European market in the first half of 2011. The engine is based on the HR12DE, the new 1.2L 3-cylinder engine mounted on the new Nissan March. High engine performance and low fuel consumption levels have been achieved through the adoption of the Miller cycle, gasoline direct injection system (GDI), and a highly efficient supercharger, in combination with an Idling Stop (stop-start) system.

By adopting the Miller cycle, in which the power stroke is enhanced by the compression stroke as a result of delaying the closing timing of the intake valve, the thermal energy of the fuel is converted to kinetic energy much more efficiently than it is with regular 4-stroke cycle engines, and pumping loss caused by intake manifold negative pressure has been reduced.

Moreover, the highly compressed and high-temperature air-fuel mixture is cooled by the latent heat of the vaporization of fuel directly injected into the cylinder, and the temperature of the combustion chamber is lowered by adopting a piston-cooling channel and sodium-filled valves to control detonation. These technologies have enabled a compression ratio of 13 for improved combustion efficiency.

The supercharger is equipped with an automatic on/off clutch, which means that both high fuel efficiency and high engine performance can be achieved by automatically switching off supercharging while driving at low speeds, such as on city roads.

Moreover, adoption of a hydrogen-free diamond-like carbon (DLC) coating for the piston rings and a variable displacement oil pump helps to reduce friction by up to 30%, compared with conventional 4-cylinder engines with similar performance levels.

These technologies are the culmination of the company’s research and development efforts based on the Nissan Green Program 2010 (NGP 2010)—Nissan’s mid-term environmental action plan that includes initiatives to reduce CO₂ emissions and introduce effective technologies, products and services into the market.

The new March. Earlier this week, Nissan announced the Japan sales launch of the all-new Nissan March. The new March represents the fourth generation of the popular series. Employing a new-generation Xtronic CVT with an auxiliary transmission and the newly developed 1.2L 3-cylinder HR12DE engine, March achieves both a 25% improvement in fuel economy over 2010 standards and SU-LEV certification, emitting 75% fewer exhaust emissions than 2005 standards in every grade. Models with stop-start offer fuel economy of 26.0 km/L (61 mpg US, 3.85 L/100km).