George Treadwell, a crew manager at London Gatwick's Fire and Rescue, gives a tour around one of the airport's 9 Øveraasen snow ploughs, which has been transition from diesel to Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). London Gatwick has cut carbon emissions from its diesel vehicles by 90% by swapping the fuel for HVO. The switch means London Gatwick will save more than 950 tonnes of carbon emissions per annum.
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00:00 This big yellow truck behind me is our Overarson snow plough. Now we have nine of
00:04 these in the fleet and I've been here for the last 14 years and I've seen these
00:08 come in service when they first arrived back just over 10 years ago. Now with the
00:14 nine of them we're able to clear the whole runway in one sweep. So let me show
00:18 you a little bit about the Overarson snow plough. So as we walk around we take
00:22 one look at the front. We've got a massive blade right at the front here. Blade at
00:30 the front, the plough is used to be able to push snow completely off the runway.
00:34 It's got a big wear strip at the bottom so it makes maximum contact with the
00:38 runway surface for optimum sort of pushing conditions. As we move down the
00:43 runway we sort of have this in an arrowhead style formation where we can
00:47 push from one side of the runway to the other, clearing all the snow off in one
00:51 go. That meaning that the runway stays open for as long as possible and the
00:56 snow ploughs stay off the runway for a maximum amount of length of time. So these
01:00 particular vehicles have all gone over to HVO as well and again with the snow
01:05 ploughs on a big day where we're getting lots of snow coming down they might be
01:09 running 24/7. These vehicles be crewed all of the time clearing snow. Now having
01:14 them as HVO vehicles is vitally important because we're not going to be
01:19 burning excess fuel, particularly when we're doing a shift changeover or a crew
01:24 change with the vehicles and we need people in and out of them getting back
01:28 out onto the runway and clearing snow, leaving the engines running, the vehicles
01:32 preheated and kept warm is essential in maintaining the operational competence
01:37 of the runway and keeping it open at all costs. So as we sort of move our way
01:42 down it, these vehicles can be crewed by two and you'll see just behind all of
01:51 the massive hydraulic gear here, pistons and rams dealt with pushing large
01:56 amounts of snow. We've got a normal Mercedes style cab truck as you would
02:02 find out on the roads as we're going around but they've been made into these
02:07 massive snow ploughs. So you will see in the front we've got a seating for two, more
02:12 often than not these are driven just solely occupant and is led by one of our
02:16 leader vehicles. Now not only are we pushing snow as well as we move down
02:21 you'll see that we've got a massive brush on the back so any loose bits of
02:26 snow that the blade isn't picking up at the front, that the plough isn't picking up at the front,
02:31 the brush behind me is also pushing that level of snow off and then even further
02:36 back behind that, the third capability of this vehicle is the fact that we're using the
02:41 blower as well. Now the advantage of using the blower as well is again any
02:45 smaller particles of snow or water, ice and the final piece here blowing it off
02:51 the side of the runway is going to ensure that we're going back to what we
02:54 refer to as back to black, getting it back to a nice, we're going back to
03:00 tarmac theoretically, back to how the runway should be for landing aircraft.
03:05 There's not too much I can really tell you about the over arcing much more than
03:11 that really. We've got two fuel tanks on board so the Mercedes cab operates with
03:17 one fuel tank and that's just the general running of the vehicle and then
03:21 the tractor unit behind me here or the main unit behind me here has a separate
03:25 fuel tank which operates the brush and the blower behind me.