The concept
What is emissions-based maintenance?
Every diesel engine writes its health into its exhaust profile. Emissions-Based Maintenance™ reads that efficiency profile, treats wasted fuel as a maintenance problem, and solves it.
Combustion is chemistry. When an engine operates as designed by the manufacturer, it leaves a distinct emissions profile. When something is drifting out of tune, the chemistry shifts before a fault code ever appears. It is an unseen problem that goes on undiagnosed until multiple drifts stack up and trigger a fault code or the engine becomes inoperable and is taken out of service for deeper diagnostics. EBM™ identifies drift and makes recommendations so the drift can be corrected, resulting in fuel savings, improved emissions, and higher equipment availability.
EBM™ measures that chemistry, compares it against the engine’s own EPA-certified baseline, and quantifies the gap as recoverable fuel. It is not a new sensor bolted onto the fleet. It is a way of reading signals the engine already produces.
The guardrail
We target 5-7% fuel savings, and typically exceed the target
There is no ‘common’ or ‘average’ fleet. We typically uncover a systemic fleet issue that is significantly increasing fuel consumption. Fleets have different operating conditions and duty cycles, so it’s impossible to know until the engine is examined.
Common questions
- Is emissions-based maintenance the same as emissions compliance testing?
- No. Compliance testing asks whether an engine is within legal limits. EBM™ reads raw exhaust combustion chemistry, to find fuel that is being wasted.
- Does it require new hardware on every engine?
- No. Readings can come from a handheld emissions probe or from telematics already on the fleet configured to feed EBM™ API connections. Allows fleet owners to maximize their investment in telematics and fleet communication costs.
See how the method reads an engine step by step, or watch it run on a live fleet.