Exhaust emissions

[forddeliveryboy]

Many thanks for that response, jonny69. I may sound like a petrol head, but am very aware of the implication of energy use as it is today and have a vested interest in maintaining fun to use personal transport. I don't care how it's powered, if it's affordable for both me and the planet - and bloody good. Since you're also on here, I guess you also rather enjoy automotive stuff?

 

I'm not yet totally convinced by the EV argument (although I'm totally aware of all the plus points) until batteries improve significantly and our grid is largely de-carbonised - by which I don't mean all nuclear, which is the very devil in my book. And beyond expensive. And anything but carbon-neutral, when you have a proper look. But that's a totally different argument for somewhere else.

 

My argument is that energy is energy, and to run an EV which is a similar mass and which has similar performance to an ICE car, requires similar amounts. Sure, a diesel is only around 40% efficient whereas an electric motor is perhaps 95% efficient (although it weighs five or six times more than a hydraulic motor, which is barely less efficient - but that is a diversion). Electric cars lose 25% in the charger alone, perhaps 5% in the batteries?, 5-10% in the grid losses, and our electrcity is still made from coal, nukes and gas. None of which is great.

 

Yes, in Germany coal-fired power stations are more efficient (and less polluting) than the UK's - Ferrybridge is our big one and is well under 50% efficient. Nearer 40 than 50. Our better small ones can near 60%, I think. Not only that, we're bludgeoning old established forests all round the world to burn in them, then replanting with monoculture. Chainsaw petrol, tractor and truck diesel, pellet-ising heat. Ships use little crude oil, I know.

 

Sure, sucking oil out of the ground uses energy, as does refining it and transporting it - I think it's around 10-12% of its total energy available. However I'm under no illusions that mineral oil is only going to become more expensive, both financially and environmentally. And it's filthy stuff.

 

I've rechecked the facts and suggesting an Octavia is on a par with a Leaf is slightly out - from what I can glean, a Leaf works out at around 100 to 110mpg ish, once the sums are done. But it won't tow, and there are other limitations. The next-gen VW stuff is going to use the tech from XL1, so a 2020 Golf is going to be quite capable of 90-100mpg. Given the lack of any energy regeneration on something like an Octavia TDi, this seems to make sense.

 

Surely for so long as batteries are so crap - they lose their energy in a few days and are very temperature-dependant, beyond their own cycle inefficiencies unlike any oil tank (and are polluting in their own right, given the mining of rare metals required) - and for as long as grid electricity is so fossil-fuel based (renewables represent 12% ish atm in the UK) then surely the EV is little - if any - better than a good ICE vehicle, regarding the environment?

 

Once wind, solar, tidal, other hydro and so on represent a large proportion of our grid electricity supply - which can support 20 million EVs - then the case is made. Until then, they are simply offsetting the pollution in a variety of ways which politicians and statisticians can say is real and green - but which is neither.

 

The Electric Vehicle is politically advantageous. If we stopped outsourcing our manufacturing to countries with few environmental or H&S laws, I'd take them a little more seriously.

[jonny69]

Sadly, it appears to me that what you're saying is that actually we should all get rid of our old chod and buy clean, new things. Should I also remove my Extended Life Vehicle stickers?!

 

Yes, it is sad but true.

 

The saving grace is that many modern cars simply don't run the numbers they say they do. It might quote 56mpg in the book, but I know that SWMBOs 2009 Peugeot 207 only does 36-37mpg on a run and a frankly shameful 27mpg round town. Most cars are like this. Since my Anglia does ~35mpg overall, the reality is that there really isn't much in it.

 

So don't feel too bad

[derskine]

My diesel 18 gets fairly good fuel economy, but I suspect due to the blue smoke that comes out the exhaust - it's not doing the environment much good.

[HH-R]

I've been on some of the diesel electric hybrid (Volvo IIRC) double deckers they have round here but they seem pretty flawed in that it pulls away to about 7 MPH on leccy then the diseasel engine kicks in, which takes a couple of seconds and continues it's extremely slow acceleration. I wouldn't fancy driving one in rush hour onto busy roundabouts and the like, you have acceleration, then nothing at all for 2-3 seconds then acceleration again.

[willswitchengage]

It'd be interesting to know what the average lifetime mileage is for a petrol/diesel too. Some cars do astonishing mileage, and like you say, that's only really possible if you're driving something that munches liquid dinosaurs. But how many dino-slurpers do less than 10,000 miles a year? I'm willing to bet quite a lot, especially when you consider how we seem to have an ageing population. 

 

Googling this I can't find a reliable answer, but at the back of my head I remember reading once in a magazine that it's around 100k.

 

 

I've been on some of the diesel electric hybrid (Volvo IIRC) double deckers they have round here but they seem pretty flawed in that it pulls away to about 7 MPH on leccy then the diseasel engine kicks in, which takes a couple of seconds and continues it's extremely slow acceleration. I wouldn't fancy driving one in rush hour onto busy roundabouts and the like, you have acceleration, then nothing at all for 2-3 seconds then acceleration again.

 

I've used them a lot in London and they seem no different to normal buses - as they have automated gearboxes I think the leccy motor also kicks in during gearchanges.

 

 

 

Yes, in Germany coal-fired power stations are more efficient (and less polluting) than the UK's - Ferrybridge is our big one and is well under 50% efficient. Nearer 40 than 50. Our better small ones can near 60%, I think. 

 

 

That's not true at all. Both are as modern as each other; the British power stations undergo continual refit to meet phenomenally stringent emissions legislation. British power stations also use imported anthracitic coal whereas German power stations use homegrown Lignite, or brown coal, which is far dirtier. Our increasing reliance on gas is a good thing as gas can be co-generated, i.e. drive a gas turbine then use the rejected heat to drive a steam turbine, with GE marketing plants of ~80% thermal efficiency.

 

 

 

The Electric Vehicle is politically advantageous. If we stopped outsourcing our manufacturing to countries with few environmental or H&S laws, I'd take them a little more seriously.

 

The Leaf is made in the UK and I'm pretty sure the next best selling EV is made by BMW.

[Wilko220]

They have a few (although very few) Hydrogen powered buses in London now. Since this technology is obviously possible to put into production, I wonder why it hasn't taken off to a greater extent.

 

Despite being an enthusiast for old cars, I completely agree that pollution control is required in big cities. All comes down to over-population basically.

[willswitchengage]

They have a few (although very few) Hydrogen powered buses in London now. Since this technology is obviously possible to put into production, I wonder why it hasn't taken off to a greater extent.

 

Because gaseous hydrogen does not exist on earth and it must be synthesised in processes that consume more energy than is released when it is combusted or used as feedstock in a fuel cell. Most strategists don't understand this.

 

It also doesn't work particularly well - in fuel cells the purity of the feedstock is paramount to stop poisoning the catalysts, which is extremely difficult, and if burnt in IC engines there's still the issue that heat engines are fundamentally very inefficient and that they will still likely produce harmful NOx as a combustion by product.

[Joey spud]

Chasing diesel emission targets is just causing reliability issues that never used to exist.

 

A few days back i attended my 4th Astra of the month that had shat itself due to trying to clean its DPF.

 

The later Vauxhalls when trying to do a passive regeneration are over heating the exhaust systems which then kills the the exhaust temp sensor shuting everything down.

I spoke to a dealer who said if regen process gets too hot (he claimed 900c) it will melt the temp sensor in the manifold and currently vauxhall are struggling to understand why it happening.

 

The fix at the moment is to install a new sensor and updated software and hope for the best.

[Inspector Morose]

They have a few (although very few) Hydrogen powered buses in London now. Since this technology is obviously possible to put into production, I wonder why it hasn't taken off to a greater extent.

They've been around for a few years now. They cost £2.25 million each if I remember right. A new double euro 6 deck in basic trim is around the £200000 mark.

 

The Volvo B5H mentioned above is a good example of the compromise of batteries over capacity. There is only enough battery capacity to allow it to pull away then the engine and automated manual gearbox (manual gearbox on a double deck bus? Those went out in the 60s!) take over and give adequate if fairly pedestrian performance. This is an example of a parallel hybrid bus.

BAE along with Alexander Dennis use a series hybrid system where the gearbox is replaced by an electric motor an the batteries supply the main power, topped up by a small engine/generator set. Again weight limit regulations and carrying capacity forces there to be only enough battery power to provide assistance and not true emission free running.

 

Optare are now playing with a different hybrid system using a flywheel energy storage unit in conjunction with the engine/gearbox. It's basically the same as used in F1 just bigger. Not been released yet but I've driven the prototype cum hack and it shows promice, giving the advantages of the electric hybrid but a lot cheaper and less complicated.

 

A few years ago I project managed the build of two hybrid railcars for use on the railway at Stourbridge junction. These used a much cruder flywheel hybrid system but it is effective and doesn't rely on any electronics at all but it's noisy and quite bulky. But it does work. Each car can have a crush load of up to 50 people but still is adequately powered by a tsingle ransit LPG engine alongside the flywheel system.

[forddeliveryboy]

Yes, it is sad but true.

 

The saving grace is that many modern cars simply don't run the numbers they say they do. It might quote 56mpg in the book, but I know that SWMBOs 2009 Peugeot 207 only does 36-37mpg on a run and a frankly shameful 27mpg round town. Most cars are like this. Since my Anglia does ~35mpg overall, the reality is that there really isn't much in it.

 

So don't feel too bad

 

Octavia diesels seem to give good figures - as many point out on this forum. The 90hp one in my use atm is averaging 55mpg in hilly country with shortish trips and will exceed 60 on a run. Another one I know of seems to give even better figures, and it's an estate. Both are significantly faster than needs be.

 

 

It does appear that the general public is only bothered about one sort of 'pollution' - the sort which affects them instantly and which can be easily seen. The approach to almost all pollution up to present has been to remember the phrase "the solution to pollution is dilution". Given the rest of the world aspires to live like an English Lord, then this approach has a limited life to live before we're all cancerous and choking.

 

For the first time in Mankind's history, we are both causing long-term dangerous damage to the place we inhabit and have the ability to halt then reverse the situation. How bad do we allow it to get before anyone takes anything seriously? It's pretty obvious that reducing soot particles and nitrous oxides has to be a good thing in many respects - but how much of this minor cleaning-up operation creates the illusion of minimising pollution (so people feel better about the 'environment', have fewer days off work and pay new 'Green Taxes') when in fact it is growing worse every year, at an alarming rate?

 

Given there are a lot of people who have been conned into believing that Nuclear power somehow makes sense, when it is simply a different (and more invisible) form of pollution which will encourage even more worthless plastic tat to be sold, just confirms how effective modern government is - the only real reason for Nuclear power is so we can have Nuclear weapons. The figures alone (Nuclear power is more expensive than any other and the insurance industry aren't interested) make this abundantly obvious.

[willswitchengage]

Given there are a lot of people who have been conned into believing that Nuclear power somehow makes sense, when it is simply a different (and more invisible) form of pollution which will encourage even more worthless plastic tat to be sold, just confirms how effective modern government is - the only real reason for Nuclear power is so we can have Nuclear weapons. The figures alone (Nuclear power is more expensive than any other and the insurance industry aren't interested) make this abundantly obvious.

 

Nuclear reactors that produce electricity don't produce usable Pu239, whereas ones that do produce hardly any electricity.

 

For all intents and purposes the US and the UK haven't enriched/synthesised any weapons grade fissile material for the best part of forty years. Nuclear power did start as a spin off of the weapons programme, yes, but for decades the industry has been producing electricity; not weapon material. I work in the industry.

[forddeliveryboy]

It aint quite as simple as that, though, is it? Right from the start, nuclear power was introduced to somehow validate the whole Nuclear Program - our arsenal, research and so feet under the top table in Global Politics. Its electricity would be so cheap it wouldn't be worth metering it and other total hogwash - which the gullible public swallowed. Elsewhere in the world, having nuclear power is the easy route to having your own nuclear weapons - the Non-Proliferation Treaty is ignored by such stable, well-balanced, peaceful states as Pakistan and Israel.

 

A few decades down the line and what has the reality been? A handful of big, near catastrophic disasters (all of them catastrophic if your family's genetics were mutated and future offspring have been deformed or sickly), many minor leaks, massive government cover-ups and obfuscation, high-grade waste dumped at sea in oil drums (in the Channel and irish Sea) which are steadily rotting through, Sellafield - which on a headsmack scale dominates any world industry - and more subsidy than is decent, way more than a country which is so in debt as the UK should be able to afford.

 

Our Nuclear factories on the NW coast of England may not be producing material for weapons at the moment, but the whole site is one bloody great big weapon for anyone crazy enough to exploit it - the whole of the North of England, Midlands and much of Scotland would be wiped out. The French surround their nuclear plants with surface-ro-air missile batteries - we have a few policemen.

 

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are like a mutated con-joined twin, almost inseparable. This is what Jacques Cousteau had to say in 1976;

 

"Human society is too diverse, national passion too strong, human aggressiveness too deep-

seated for the peaceful and the warlike atom to stay divorced for long. We cannot embrace

one while abhorring the other; we must learn, if we want to live at all, to live without both."

[Mr_Bo11ox]

^^^^ Wooly. I like nuclear power. It seems to be the best combo of steady generation of meaningful quantities of energy vs environmental cost, just cos some other less stable countries are using it for unspecified means is not a reason to make more use of it here. You're saying we shouldnt ever play cricket in case someone deliberately lobs a cricket ball at someone elses head.

[Lacquer Peel]

Good luck causing mass destruction with cricket balls.

[forddeliveryboy]

^^^^ Wooly. I like nuclear power. It seems to be the best combo of steady generation of meaningful quantities of energy vs environmental cost, just cos some other less stable countries are using it for unspecified means is not a reason to make more use of it here. You're saying we shouldnt ever play cricket in case someone deliberately lobs a cricket ball at someone elses head.

 

^^^ It's all in the translation, as usual.

 

I'm suggesting we shouldn't play cricket with live grenades, on an aluminium pitch floating on oil. But those behind the power like this, as it makes people frightened and lends those running the show more resposnibility, so (cough) more respect.

 

Actually, Mr Bollox, I think there is far more danger in nuclear power stations than there ever will be in nuclear warheads. The twin towers could very easily be made to look as deadly as wrapping a match head in silver foil and lighting the other end. (If you ignore the Murrican response).

[Pete-M]

Diesels are evil.

 

Nitrobenzanthrone.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Nitrobenzanthrone

 

Yup. About the most cancerous thing known to man and diesellists are happily chucking clouds of the shit everywhere because they save a few quid by driving a diesel.

 

 

That's just one of the nasty bits of shit diesels pump out.

 

Still. Not to worry. Cheaper to run a DIEsel than a petrol, and that's what matters, eh?

[forddeliveryboy]

My old MoT tester hated the newer common rail oil burners - with an old diesel he'd open the workshop door a little to let the gases out, with the newer type if the doors weren't wide open he'd start to get dizzy, then have a massive coughing fit once the PM0s had had a trip round his pulmonary system and wanted to come back out, through the lungs. Old fashioned smoke rarely gets into the blood, the lungs can filter it - with some coughing once it builds up. Plus it's visible.

 

The worst emissions from all engines are in the warm-up phase. Didn't Saab have a thermos flask for the cooling system a few years ago, which never caught on? Judging by smell and fuel consumption, there is more nasty stuff chucked into the air during the first 5 minutes than over the following hour - the school run probably raises air sniffer readings by a massive amount.

 

Environmentalists have been trying to draw public attention to vehicle exhausts for years. Petrol exhausts are a little better, but hardly something you'd choose to breathe, full of carcinogens too - and in a greater quantity. The only safe way to travel is on a horse, obviously. That way your carrots and spuds can be grown without multiple applications of deadly carcinogenic sprays from a diesel tractor doing about 2 gallons to the mile.

[Bobthebeard]

It does rather appear that......

 

Sadly.

[forddeliveryboy]

That's enough now, Fraser!

 

A combination of tidal, solar, wind and storage across Europe (and even North Africa), all interconnected with a HVDC supergrid is the most likely way out of the problem we've made for ourselves, later this century - once reality has dawned on our politicians. Gas will fill in any little gaps in grid output at short notice. The cost of nuclear alone should see its demise, not including the un-costable threat from increasingly mobile world terrorism. EVs will be probably be everywhere on cost grounds with liquid fuel prices through the roof - petrol and diesel cars will be as curious as steam cars are to our generation, by the last few decades of this century.

 

I've never believed in the 'next big energy revolution' - the Hydrogen economy, nuclear fusion with its 'free' energy and so on have been touted as just round the corner since I was a kid. Fuel cells will probably make their way into everyday life and be used in cars.

 

That Germany, Europe's manufacturing power-house and massive energy consumer, the country which told Google to f-off, the country which has protected the civil liberties which generations of Englishmen fought for then lost within one political regime - has ditched nuclear power, says A LOT. They aren't planning for the next five years, they're planning for the next 25 and beyond, rather like our Victorian ancestors did.

[willswitchengage]

I've never believed in the 'next big energy revolution' - the Hydrogen economy, nuclear fusion with its 'free' energy and so on have been touted as just round the corner since I was a kid. Fuel cells will probably make their way into everyday life and be used in cars.

 

I've worked on NIF a couple of years ago and, er, inertial confinement fusion is still a long way off.

 

Fuel cells are impracticable for previously mentioned regions, especially hydrogen. Methanol is probably the next best energy carrier and doesn't require as purer feedstock, but it highly poisonous to humans (incidentally why you shouldn't buy knocked off spirits!).

 

 

 

has ditched nuclear power, says A LOT

 

It says they're making a populist knock on effect, and nothing else. I guess that is "a lot", as you purport. Japan, an arguably more advanced economy, is beginning to restart its reactors as it's still cheaper, safer and better for the environment than using fossil fuels.

 

 

 

A few decades down the line and what has the reality been? A handful of big, near catastrophic disasters (all of them catastrophic if your family's genetics were mutated and future offspring have been deformed or sickly), many minor leaks, massive government cover-ups and obfuscation, high-grade waste dumped at sea in oil drums (in the Channel and irish Sea) which are steadily rotting through, Sellafield - which on a headsmack scale dominates any world industry - and more subsidy than is decent, way more than a country which is so in debt as the UK should be able to afford.

 

The extraction of coal and oil have caused the loss of thousands of lives in the past century and both remain two of the world's most dangerous industries. For every Chernobyl or Fukushima there is a Piper Alpha, Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez with arguably greater human and environmental consequences.

 

Nuclear in the UK is subsidised to a lesser extent than aviation and shipping, who benefit from 100% tax relief on their fuel. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vfupmanual/vfup4000.htm

[Asimo]

About five years ago i applied for a job with an outfit called River Simple who were working on a small hydrogen fuel cell / electric car.

 

 

I got nowhere with the job but they still seem to exist. Don't see the future of cars being this complex, it's not the fuel, I could run a model T Ford on Hydrogen, if it was available. Hydrogen, like electricity, is not an energy source, it is just a means of transferring stored energy.

[forddeliveryboy]

I've worked on NIF a couple of years ago and, er, inertial confinement fusion is still a long way off.

 

Exactly - yet people seem to think we can stall for time and do little or nothing, since this is just round the corner and will answer all our prayers.

 

 

It says they're making a populist knock on effect, and nothing else. I guess that is "a lot", as you purport. Japan, an arguably more advanced economy, is beginning to restart its reactors as it's still cheaper, safer and better for the environment than using fossil fuels.

 

That's quite incorrect, German democracy works a little differently from ours - it isn't led by Murdoch or the front page of a tabloid newspaper and they think in the longer term, not creating policies to win elections every four or five years. The German political leadership took a cold, clinical look at the cost/benefit relationship of nuclear power, including the costs of an accident and has decided to phase it out. There is a large and decentralised renewable energy production and they're pouring money into energy storage research.

 

I'd struggle to describe a country or its economy as 'advanced' with power stations which can wipe out an entire region when the (as predicted) large wave following earth tremor switches them off. To say it was fortunate that the wind was blowing from the West when Fukushima exploded is a massive understatement. 

 

Japan is restarting a few reactors (under massive public opposition) because they are in a huge hole - they rely largely on imported fossil fuel, but are investing in alternative, cheaper and more reliable energy. Having neglected renewables until their nuclear energy disaster, there is some catching up to do - but they're hard-working and innovative. It's quite possible that out of a tragedy will emerge some great new technologies.

 

The extraction of coal and oil have caused the loss of thousands of lives in the past century and both remain two of the world's most dangerous industries. For every Chernobyl or Fukushima there is a Piper Alpha, Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez with arguably greater human and environmental consequences.

 

Yep, totally. Coal and oil are filthy fuels, at least unlike a nuclear accident, the catastrophe at Piper Alpha or (near disaster) at Buncefield http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire didn't threaten to wipe out a whole region of a country, with continuing, appalling mutagenic effects down the generations. But I'd say we're in the Autumn of the fossil fuel age, and the nuclear age for that matter - even in the USA, grid-connected renewables are generating more power than the nuke industry.

 

Money talks, and renewables are becoming cheaper per unit energy generated year on year. The sun doesn't stop shining from one year to the next, wind doesn't stop blowing, tides carry on flowing and gravity is as good as it ever was.

[DS20]

Audi is busy synthesising diesel (using sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, and some algae), and a company in the north-east is working on synthesising petrol (electricity, water, and carbon dioxide in). I suspect we'll be using conventional fuels for a while, only we won't be extracting them from refined oil, and the electricity needed to make them will be renewably-generated. Electricity is a great fuel, but doesn't really work will if the electrically-powered object isn't stationary & plugged into the mains.

[forddeliveryboy]

The Sabatier Process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction shows some potential - natural gas storage is one way of capturing excess renewable energy.

[willswitchengage]

The Sabatier Process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction shows some potential - natural gas storage is one way of capturing excess renewable energy.

 

Weirdly the most efficient way of "storing" electricity is still to pump it from one lake to another up a mountain

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

[forddeliveryboy]

Yes, Dinorwig is great! Ironic that it was originally built to help with the uncontrollability of nuclear power. We'll probably see plenty more Dinorwigs in the future, as well as projects like the Severn Barrage going ahead. A supergrid of electricity across Europe, North Africa and into the Middle East may eventually be built, allowing more efficient energy transfers from places with spare energy to those with a shortage.

[Squire_Dawson]

The whole damn motor car is a futile, Victorian invention and I shall be glad when all of them conk out or run out of fuel. It really is infantile and pathetic that these cumbersome things, which have to change through gears to gather speed, clog the roads and pollute our air in the 21st Century. Like many 'modern innovations' not enough thought was given to the future consequences and in Britain governments have encouraged private car ownership with the result that we now depend on them, so hectic and fragmented are our lives.

 

This may sound odd coming from someone who likes (old) cars, but I'll not shed a tear when the car has been superseded by better modes of transportation and planning which concentrates on the human being as a part of nature, not just money, greed and short-term gain. To move forward, man must conquer all his childish instincts and desires, but I fear that is impossible.