VW Diesel Engine Emissions Clean Up Technology |
Unfortunately all chemical reactions are imperfect, and the reactions involved with the burning of gasoline and diesel produces a lot of noxious smog forming toxic emissions. The dark side of diesel engines exists in the huge amounts of particulate matter they release directly into the ground level air we breath, resulting in lung cancers.
Technology offers clean diesel solutions to give us great diesel fuel economy vehicles with much safer emissions. Using bio-diesel in these oil burners results in a number of benefits. Lets take a short look at this story.....
I have long championed diesel engines because of their superior thermodynamic efficiency and the greater resulting fuel economy of vehicles equipped with these high compression long stroke glow plug oil burning diesel engines. There is a dark side to these energy efficient oil burners however... :(
The Diesel PM Story
Unfortunately diesel engines emit abundant amounts of Particulate Matter (PM), fine dusty particles of unburned or partially burned carbon that cause asthma, COPD and lung cancer. Worse still is that this fine particulate dust from diesel engines lingers around the ground level air we breath like a cloud coal power fly ash emissions suspended by a light breeze, clogging the lungs of all who inhale this funk.
More Lung Cancer
Inhalation of diesel engine emissions (DEE) has now been positively identified as a major causal factor in lung cancers, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the World Health Organization (WHO) *see http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/06/iarc-20120613.html
Modern Diesels are Cleaner
The picture is not all sooty and bad however. Modern turbo diesel engines like the ones in a newer VW Passat or Mercedes E350 employ particulate trapping exhaust control technologies. They consequently smell a lot better as the product of reducing their toxic emissions substantially. Smog smells like toxic garbage (it is), and any technologies that reduces smog forming emissions are a real tripple win for the economy, the environment and public health.
Bio-Diesel Solution
Diesel vehicle operators and those who breath around their vehicles can greatly benefit when the oil burning driver chooses to fill up their vehicle with cleaner burning bio-diesel.
"Using 100-percent biodiesel (B100) eliminates all of the sulfur emissions associated with conventional diesel, cuts emissions of carbon monoxide and smog-producing particulate matter almost in half, and reduces hydrocarbon emissions by between 75 and 90 percent. Perhaps most significantly, using B100 reduces the emissions of carbon dioxide—the main greenhouse gas causing global warming—by more than 75 percent. Even using a blended biodiesel fuel like B20 (a 20-percent biodiesel/80-percent petrodiesel blend offered at most biodiesel fueling stations) still reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent, according to the Department of Energy." Andrew Korfhage, https://www.greenamerica.org/livinggreen/biodiesel.cfm
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