Diesels? For those who know, to educate one who doesn't! (1 Viewer)

[John Mee]

Why are diesels apparently so hard to make clean? Surely there must be a way to take out the particulates and Nitrous Oxide. Do power power station chimneys not have anti pollution filters? My Autocruise Vista is 18 yrs old. How long will it be before I am told I have to scrap it, or only drive it when the wind is blowing in the right direction? If I scrap it, what do I buy, assuming I win the lottery? Is there any viable alternative fuel to diesel? What is the comparative pollution cost of building a new van compared to keeping my perfectly usable van on the road? And, finally, is there any way I can make my 1.9td Pug run cleaner that will please Mr Gove?

 

[Stealaway]

You ---------------------------and one milion truck, trains and boats?

 

[buttons]

VW found the way but had to crock the books to cover up how much power you lose in doing it.

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[Spriddler]

I fear I'll be in a similar situation.
I investigated very thoroughly converting my diesel engine to petrol or LPG but to cut a long story short, forget it.
Maybe you could do a direct swap of the 1.9td engine (Peugeot?) with the later cleaner Peugeot diesel or petrol version?

 

[Steve N Tracy]

Later diesels are not that dirty, direct injection petrol engines put out far more particulates, its just that diesels are a easy target everybody has seen the smoke belching old bus and lorry which make the current kill the diesel discussions easy to justify.

 

[Northernraider]

First thing to realise is it's not about the environment it's about the tax and the encorouging people to buy newer expensive vehicles ....

That's the reason behind most of the UK government war on pollution

How much money can they raise from it.

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[tacr2man]

Dont worry yourself overmuch . They cant retroactively raise the emission level your vehicle has to comply with . Low emission zones are most they can do . Which already are in operation (London)
and several European cities . Just means you have to use alt means
eg e bike , scooter, public trans, and park on outskirts of city , which isn't a good environment for motorhomes anyway . Big cities with lots of traffic will have a job to get much stricter , as brake and tyre dust even from E vehicles are borderline , with ULEZ .

 

[Manxcat]

So far the responses have been interesting but have not answered to OPs questions. I too am interested in this. Ignoring the propaganda and tax arguments it looks like the writing is on the wall for Diesel powered vans whether we like it or not. As I see it there are no current alternatives, I am not even aware of one manufacturer that provides a petrol or hybrid alternative in Europe. I am presuming that in the next year or so such alternatives will emerge.

I certainly do not want to spend 50 or 60k on a new van only to find that I am banned from taking it to large towns and cities in a few years. PS tomorrow I am going to Bordeaux for a couple of days, good camping very near the centre.

 

[Snowbird]

Aha,an 18 year old Pug engine. Prime candidate for Bio diesel. My old VW 1.9 was run on the stuff from new. Zero emissions at MOT time.

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[Spriddler]

First thing to realise is it's not about the environment it's about the tax and the encorouging people to buy newer expensive vehicles ....

That's the reason behind most of the UK government war on pollution

How much money can they raise from it.

Quite. I see very little of the £billions of punitive and so-called environmental taxes that are levied on the 'low hanging fruit' (i.e motorists') being spent on developing positive and innovative methods of pollution reduction. I'm quite sure that the bulk of it disappears into the general Exchequer pot.
I see that wood burning stoves are in the spotlight now but hey don't propose to ban wood or coal fuel
I'd ban BBQs. Fed up with the neighbour's greasy smoke billowing into my garden on an otherwise pleasant evening.

 

[Gromett]

The problem is the extremely small particulates that can pass into the blood stream because they are so small. DPF's help with this to some degree.
The other Problem is NOx which is a known health issue. NOx is produced in much larger quantities by diesel engines but can be mitigated by using urea (adblue).
There is also the EGR system which recycles a proportion of the exhaust gasses back into the combustion chamber.
Add to this catalytic converters. Which convert carbon monoxide and other carbon compounds in the exhaust to CO2 and water.
More tricks keep being added but the output of a diesel is still dirtier than a petrol car.

Petrol is a risk due to high green house gas output.
Diesel is a risk due to health problem causing pollution ..

Each time a new round of pollution rules come out the manufacters add more technology to the car making it more expensive, more complicated and with more reliability issues.

This is where the electric car comes in in my view. The electric cars primary cost is the battery which is coming down in cost. With the rising cost of diesel (historically) and now the rising cost of pollution mitigation. There will come a time very very soon when electric cars on a downward cost path will cross over with the ICE car which has a rising cost path. At that point the debate will be over no matter which side of it you are on.

 

[Snowbird]

Having spent the last few weeks trundling around Germany you cannot help noticing every available space is covered in solar panels. Why on earth the UK government reduced the feed in tariff for solar panels is beyond my comprehension. If they want everyone driving around in electric cars, where is all this electric coming from ?. I would only consider an electric car if I could fill the house roof with solar, otherwise I will stick with bio.

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[busby]

Dont worry yourself overmuch . They cant retroactively raise the emission level your vehicle has to comply with . Low emission zones are most they can do . Which already are in operation (London)
and several European cities . Just means you have to use alt means
eg e bike , scooter, public trans, and park on outskirts of city , which isn't a good environment for motorhomes anyway . Big cities with lots of traffic will have a job to get much stricter , as brake and tyre dust even from E vehicles are borderline , with ULEZ .

They should be brave enough to ban all private cars from cities and provide free buses and trams..Never ever thought i would say it but its the only answer..BUSBY.

 

[mpdcymru]

Hydrogen power could be the way to go. Lots of city buses already use it and it is starting to filter into the luv market. Supposedly the only emissions from hydrogen power pack is water.

 

[Northernraider]

Hydrogen power could be the way to go. Lots of city buses already use it and it is starting to filter into the luv market. Supposedly the only emissions from hydrogen power pack is water.

Yes they've had that technology shelved for decades because it didn't suit them to use it while the kept screwing tax out of fossil fuel

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[Hettie's Crew]

I don’t understand why older diesels can’t be brought up to date, our Euro 6 Citroen car has all the filtering and AdBlue stuff on the exhaust side, after combustion. I accept that the combustion may have been improved also, but surely there’s a market for after market kits.
No incentive for car manufacturers though, they want you buying a new one.

 

[1_man_and_his_dob(lo)]

Later diesels are not that dirty, direct injection petrol engines put out far more particulates, its just that diesels are a easy target everybody has seen the smoke belching old bus and lorry which make the current kill the diesel discussions easy to justify.

Not being into cars so much nowadays, I didn't even realise petrol particulate filters were a thing until I read this article yesterday:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/peugeo...production-halted-due-to-tightening-emissions

I wonder if all petrol engines will end up having to use them eventually?

 

[DanielFord]

Hydrogen power could be the way to go. Lots of city buses already use it and it is starting to filter into the luv market. Supposedly the only emissions from hydrogen power pack is water.

It's the only way to go that makes any sense. I do chuckle under my breath when people in my area wax lyrical about their "emission free" Nissan Leaf, and then they go home and plug it in to a power point supplied by Drax (a coke burning power plant).
Hydrogen fuel cells are frankly the only answer that makes any sense!

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[Rapido925M]

It's the only way to go that makes any sense. I do chuckle under my breath when people in my area wax lyrical about their "emission free" Nissan Leaf, and then they go home and plug it in to a power point supplied by Drax (a coke burning power plant).
Hydrogen fuel cells are frankly the only answer that makes any sense!

So where will the hydrogen come from?

There's a plentiful supply in the Sun but that's a bit of an unlikely source.

The other obvious place is water, where the hydrogen is combined chemically with oxygen. They can be separated by passing an electric current through it.

And where will that electricity come from? Perhaps Drax?

Gordon

 

[joe and sue]

I fully agree with the points about where will all of the electricity come from, most of it has a carbon footprint so really electric cars are not zero emission as we are led to believe, this is all sales hype.
If diesel is so bad why are there still thousands of diesel taxis in London and other cities all idling their engines for most of the day, why are they not being made with hybrid or electric power units. Or dont the gov want to hack off all of those taxi drivers.
Joe & Sue

 

[Zains Pops]

It's the only way to go that makes any sense. I do chuckle under my breath when people in my area wax lyrical about their "emission free" Nissan Leaf, and then they go home and plug it in to a power point supplied by Drax (a coke burning power plant).
Hydrogen fuel cells are frankly the only answer that makes any sense!

I think you'll find that Drax now runs on bio mass, the euphemistic name for wood chips generally imported from USA, with a very dubious CO2 trail from forest to power station.

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[Manxcat]

Whenever a thread like this get going I hear the same type of arguments:

1. There isn't a problem, it's just government trying to screw you for more tax
2. There isn't a problem, diesel is every bit as good as other stuff
3. This new fangled electric/hydrogen/solar stuff is nonsense and will never work. It's all just hype.

My take on it is that the old ice method is shown to be damaging to the environment and we must do something about it. I am no engineer but I will happily buy an electric van if one were available and practical.

 

[GWAYGWAY]

So where will the hydrogen come from?

There's a plentiful supply in the Sun but that's a bit of an unlikely source.

The other obvious place is water, where the hydrogen is combined chemically with oxygen. They can be separated by passing an electric current through it.

And where will that electricity come from? Perhaps Drax?

Gordon

Yes the stupid idea of cutting trees in the USA and shipping the wood bits in huge bulk carriers to the East Coast of the UK and then taking it to Drax. I cannot understand the stupidity of the imbecile that thought that was good for the environment.. Drax would burn every bit of wood in my Wodland and consume it in 5 minutes.??????????????????? WTF do these people do for brains. The ship alone consumes enough to keep the station going for a fair time.

 

[DanielFord]

Yes the stupid idea of cutting trees in the USA and shipping the wood bits in huge bulk carriers to the East Coast of the UK and then taking it to Drax. I cannot understand the stupidity of the imbecile that thought that was good for the environment.. Drax would burn every bit of wood in my Wodland and consume it in 5 minutes.??????????????????? WTF do these people do for brains. The ship alone consumes enough to keep the station going for a fair time.

Yes, totally unsustainable, so no way the government would renew the contract for another 10 years, oh wait..........

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[DanielFord]

So where will the hydrogen come from?

There's a plentiful supply in the Sun but that's a bit of an unlikely source.

The other obvious place is water, where the hydrogen is combined chemically with oxygen. They can be separated by passing an electric current through it.

And where will that electricity come from? Perhaps Drax?

Gordon

Hydrogen is the most plentiful element on the planet, and hydrogen fuel cells only produce water as their exhaust. Google it, the science is fascinating. It really is the future

 

[tacr2man]

Why anyone would think that governments do anything that a normal person with common sense would are lacking it themselves IMHO

 

[TheTwoOfUs]

Hydrogen fuel stations are being built in Sheffield, not just for vehicles but other installations. The last time I looked though there were only a handful of refuelling stations throughout the country despite being in production for several years. If you want more info search for ITM, Sheffield.

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[Gromett]

So where will the hydrogen come from?

There's a plentiful supply in the Sun but that's a bit of an unlikely source.

The other obvious place is water, where the hydrogen is combined chemically with oxygen. They can be separated by passing an electric current through it.

And where will that electricity come from? Perhaps Drax?

Gordon

It's even worse than that. Electrolyses is the most inefficient way to get Hydrogen. What they actually do is use Steam reforming of hydrocarbons usually natural gas..
So you take the gas which is high in carbon, use loads of electricity generally generated using more hydrocarbons which then gives you this lovely 'clean' hydrogen. Which you then load onto trucks usually diesel powered to ship to the end point. Then when you convert the hydrogen back to electricity in the car you lose another chunk due to the efficiency of the conversion process. The maximum theoretical efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell is 83%. So at each stage you are losing energy in conversion processes and quite a few of them have high carbon output.

Whereas a lithium battery is close to 100% efficient in the storage... Once you count in the chargers/inverter tech you are actually closer to 95% efficiency. And we don't need to ship this pernicious and difficult to handle explosive gas around.

It is worth noting that renewable energy is ramping up faster than expected. Last year was a landmark year in that zero carbon generation such as renewables and nuclear exceeded gas/coal etc for the first time... 29% of all electric used in the UK last year was from renewable. This is a massive ramp up from only 10 years ago. There are now some really really HUGE wind farms going up offshore now that will come online of the next year or two and we can expect to see further big jumps in the percentage of power provided by renewables.

By the time ICE cars are banned we should be well over the 100% renewable mark and probably exporting electric. Electric cars will not be an issue With the rise in capacity of batteries and the fall in price we should see cars that are cheaper but still with a range of 300 miles. Exciting times.

 

[Gromett]

This is an interesting read.

https://www.ft.com/content/437c4e8a-efc0-11e7-ac08-07c3086a2625

 

[tick59]

What difference is all this change in doing away with carbon fuels going to make to the planet and global warming???? How will we as a little island make a difference ????? The USA, Russia, China and India along with other countries don't give a S%%T about global warming and still use coal and other carbon fuels so how is this little island going to make a difference???????

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