Freudenberg-NOK CASCO™ Seals Offer Superior Performance To Commercial Diesel Vehicles

PLYMOUTH, Mich., Oct. 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Diesel engines play an essential role in transporting goods and services around the country. But the light commercial vehicles and heavy duty trucks that ply the nation's freeways are constantly exposed to aggressive environmental conditions – temperature extremes, atmospheric pollutants, challenging terrain – that can shorten the life of standard engine components and cost commercial freight companies valuable resources in terms of down time and truck repairs.

Pair these challenges with industry trends toward more stringent emission regulations, more intensive use of fleets, more global platforms and an active push to reduce production costs and heavy duty vehicle manufacturers find themselves juggling a variety of industry issues.

Fortunately for commercial customers, Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies has developed its unique CASCO™ cassette-type seals to address these dynamic trucking conditions. The company's CASCO crankshaft seals not only deliver up to a 70 percent energy savings over traditional crankshaft seals, but they also result in better fuel economy, longer service life and significantly lower emissions. The seals are part of Freudenberg-NOK's Low Emission Sealing Solutions (LESS) portfolio of products which have been designed to meet some of the toughest challenges in today's transportation industry.

"Freudenberg-NOK understands the unique system needs of truck and bus manufacturers and has provided a portfolio of technology solutions that address these needs. Among those components is the CASCO seal," said Jeff Nelson, senior director, Automotive, Freudenberg-NOK. "The CASCO seal is being used by a variety of automotive and general industry companies to great success. It has been field tested under the most extreme conditions and consistently outperforms traditional sealing solutions."

The CASCO cassette-type seal generates much lower friction due to the advanced design of its axial sealing lip compared with conventional lip designs used in other engine seals. This tailor grooved sealing lip produces a combined pump and centrifugal effect for enhanced sealing performance. A "hovercraft" effect between the sealing lip and the working counter surface results in very low wear. Further, the CASCO cassette seal power loss level is unchanged when increasing crankshaft diameter while other crankshaft seal designs show increasing power loss behavior. The CASCO seal is less sensitive to the negative effects of aging oil and power levels remain stable providing beneficial effects throughout the entire lifetime of the seal. Carbon residuals are pumped away from the sealing lip area preventing stacking and leakages.

The CASCO cassette seal has been continuously tested for more than 250,000 hours – equal to nearly 1 million miles – and shows negligible wear after testing. These results are confirmed by testing on light- and heavy-duty vehicles.

CASCO seals successfully passed a number of tests representing polluted environments: in used oil containing high percentages of carbon deposits; in low temperature conditions; and with high eccentricity and axial play in the engine crankshaft. The seals demonstrated superior performance in all of these difficult conditions.

Given an average 62,000 miles / year for a light commercial vehicle and 124,000 miles per year in a heavy duty truck, the energy savings generated in one year by each engine equipped with CASCO seals at the crankshaft (front and rear) has been calculated at approximately 800 kWh and 1500 kWh respectively. This 2,300 kWh in total represents a savings of almost 60 gallons of diesel fuel annually.  Each gallon of diesel fuel pollutes the atmosphere with 21.7 pounds of CO_2. Taking into account the current volume supplied for the vehicles mentioned, CASCO seals will contribute to a reduction of about 50,000 tons of CO₂ emissions annually.

"CASCO cassette seals provide reliability in the most challenging conditions," Nelson concluded. "This offers our customer tremendous value. Customers can be confident that CASCO will continue to work under the toughest environmental conditions. You can't underestimate the value of that kind of performance."

About Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies
Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies is the Americas joint venture between Freudenberg and Co. in Germany and NOK Corp. in Japan. Freudenberg-NOK is a leading producer of advanced sealing technologies for a variety of markets including: aerospace; agriculture; appliance; automotive; construction; diesel engine; energy; food and beverage; heavy industry; and pharmaceutical. Founded in 1989 under the legal name Freudenberg-NOK General Partnership, Freudenberg-NOK is headquartered in Plymouth, Mich. and operates more than 20 facilities across the Americas. For additional information, please visit www.fnst.com.

SOURCE Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies

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