Dump Your Deezel

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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Peter.N. »

We don't have gas where we live so burn oil, wood and coal - all incidentally cheaper than electricity, if you buy your oil at the right time. As our nearest neighbour is about 1/4 mile away and the next nearest 1 mile and the fact that we are 500' up and 2 miles from the sea I don't think the pollution we produce does a great deal of harm. But in towns and cities, yes something needs to be done.

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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by mickthemaverick »

Peter.N. wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 11:10 We don't have gas where we live so burn oil, wood and coal - all incidentally cheaper than electricity, if you buy your oil at the right time. As our nearest neighbour is about 1/4 mile away and the next nearest 1 mile and the fact that we are 500' up and 2 miles from the sea I don't think the pollution we produce does a great deal of harm. But in towns and cities, yes something needs to be done.

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Peter,
While I appreciate your reasoning I don't feel you have accepted the situation. Pollution is a global problem and as such every single emission we make, whether from the densest cities or the remotest farmhouses, contributes to the global level of pollution. While local emissions in remote areas will have less effect than that from dense areas, it is the principal of emitting the pollution that is at issue. It will only ever get better when every single one of us unites to solve the problem and it is quite clear from the response to Brexit that even within our own "United Kingdom" it would appear to be virtually impossible to unite on anything. :( :( :(
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Gibbo2286 »

Man is, by nature, a lazy beast, he does not need twice encouraging to do nothing.
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Gibbo2286 »

There's a series of videos here that offer solutions to localised air pollution, I've suggested before that this is what's needed in our most polluted city streets, I also suggested that it's the sort of thing that Dyson would be good at.

If our city mayors had a go at this instead of banning everything that moves the results would be better for the people who live in these zones.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ai ... RM=VDMCNR
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by mickthemaverick »

Some very interesting systems there Gibbo. The trouble is, while any form of air filtration is good, it is only treating the symptoms and not the root cause. Without doubt cleaning the polluted air will help reduce secondary issues such as asthma etc but there is always a danger that successful treatment of the symptoms reduces the urgency in dealing with the disease. The best way is not to pollute the air in the first place and that is what we need to concentrate on while still possibly following China's example of cleaning the air as best we can for all our benefit. You must not forget however, that cleaning the air by filtration results in filters full of pollutants which have to be disposed of without re-polluting the air!! :)
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by myglaren »

One wonders how they dispose of that. Burn it?

There were a lot of those proposed a couple of years ago but they seem to have gone quiet lately.
There was a seemingly viable Norwegian one but again, silence.
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Michel »

Even I'm considering a small petrol/hybrid vehicle instead of the Skoda and simply hiring one if we need something larger now and again.

Going on holiday to the South of France, according to the online carbon footprint calculators would be greener flying if it were just one of me, but as there is 3 of us, the car wins. An average flight, as a rough calculation appears to be equivalent pollution-wise to 60mpg in the car.
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by mickthemaverick »

myglaren wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 12:14 One wonders how they dispose of that. Burn it?
I don't know how corrosive/poisonous the filtrate would be, but if possible I would think it would be a brilliant plan to compress the material into solid blocks, maybe with a binding agent, and use the blocks to build filtration towers? :)
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Gibbo2286 »

mickthemaverick wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 12:56
myglaren wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 12:14 One wonders how they dispose of that. Burn it?
I don't know how corrosive/poisonous the filtrate would be, but if possible I would think it would be a brilliant plan to compress the material into solid blocks, maybe with a binding agent, and use the blocks to build filtration towers? :)
If you go back up the thread to my 'tetronics' link there's more in there on the subject.

Also in the Chinese filter story they're making jewellery from the stuff.
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by van ordinaire »

They're also building coal fired power stations at an alarming rate!
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Mandrake »

bobins wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 08:58 I think there's a common misconception regarding the 'greenness' of BEVs. They're not 'clean' and they're not 'green', they're just slightly less dirty than ICE vehicles.
It's not about what type of motive power your vehicle has, it's about the fact that you've got a vehicle in the first place.
I'm sure you have some facts and figures or research to back up this claim.... ? :wink:

Pollution produced by cars falls into these categories.

1) Emissions at point of use.

a) For ICE vehicles this obviously includes everything that comes out of the tailpipe. If your emissions control systems are in tip top shape then when the catalytic converter is warmed up and the car is being driven at a constant moderate speed those emissions should in theory be primarily CO2 and water vapour thanks to the catayltic converter. Technically I would label CO2 as a greenhouse gas not a "pollutant", however excessive production of CO2 may cause global warming even if it's not directly poisonous to passers by as soot and NOx are.

Soot and NOx are more of a diesel problem however petrols can produce unburnt HC and CO during periods of acceleration exceeding about 5 seconds - which is about the limit for the oxygen storage in the catalyst. After that the unburnt HC and CO from the rich mixture go straight through the catalytic converter until an oxygen rich phase (deceleration) occurs to recharge the oxygen storage part of the converter. So just because HC and CO are low during your emissions test at a constant 2500 rpm or idle doesn't mean that it remains that way during actual driving. In fact the catalyst isn't nearly as effective when the car is pushed along, and of course the catalyst is also ineffective until it warms up so all ICE cars pump out significant pollution for the first few minutes driving.

A BEV has zero tailpipe emissions, obviously, no matter how hard you drive it

Winner: BEV by a landslide.

b) Particulates from tyres and brake pads are getting a lot of attention lately, mainly from those looking desparately to find something bad to say about BEV's, whilst conviently ignoring the fact that ICE vehicles also have tyres and brake pads... :roll:

Brake pads used to contain asbestos which was bad, now they don't, but they're still nasty things and I agree that the dust put out into the environment is bad, if nothing else it must at least pollute the waterways after it washes down drains etc...

In an ICE vehicle all deceleration beyond the small amount of engine braking is converted into heat and brake/disc pad wear. Fact.

A BEV has regeneative braking which allows most of the energy of deceleration to be captured and stored in the battery instead of using the friction brakes. The amount of regeneration available does vary a lot from one model of EV to another but the trend with newer models is for stronger regeneration so that the friction brakes are more or less relegated to holding you stationary when stopped and performing emergency stops. Most deceleration in normal driving can be done purely from regeneration, that means no brake pad wear at all during those times.

As a result brake and disc pad wear on BEV's is dramatically lower than an ICE. Even on an older EV like mine which only has moderate amounts of regeneration, brake pad wear is about 1/2 to 1/3rd of what it is in an ICE, and with stronger regeneration in future models this will improve further. In fact the brake wear on mine is so low that the discs keep rusting up in wet weather as they're almost never used hard enough to wear down the surface rust that forms, but that's a separate problem! There are plenty of reports of Leaf Taxi's still on their original discs and pads at 100k miles...

Winner: BEV by a factor of about 2 or 3.

c) Tyre particulates. A few bogus claims have come out in the last couple of years that EV's generate a lot more tyre particulates "because they're heavier" than ICE vehicles. This is over simplisitic to say the least. Yes BEV's are typically 10-20% heavier than a comparable ICE using todays battery technology. However tyre wear is not just about vehicle weight. It's obviously also about how you drive and how silly you are with the go pedal.

Any time you push tyres past their point of grip tyre wear increases dramatically through scrubbing. Although EV's can have a lot of torque and therefore potential to spin the wheels, they also tend to have excellent traction control that avoids wheel spin unless you disable traction control and go out of your way to spin the wheels. Tesla's are a great example - they achieve their rediculously fast 0-60 times without any wheel spin at all as the torque is so precisely controlled that wheel spin just doesn't get a chance to occur unless you deliberately want it.

Trying to drive an ICE aggressively on the other hand it's almost impossible to avoid a bit of wheelspin here and there especially in first gear. So smoother torque delivery, no gear changes to cause sudden changes in torque and very precise traction control mean that tyre wear on BEV's is not really any worse despite them being a bit heavier, and keeping in mind that as battery energy density continues to improve BEV's at some point will reach weight parity with ICE and eventually surpass them to be even lighter as the non-battery parts of a BEV (motor, gearbox etc) are considerably ligher than their ICE counterparts.

Winner: Draw.

2) Pollution at the point of energy/fuel production and delivery of the energy/fuel to the car.

In the case of a BEV this is relatively easy to work out. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me but this will give a rough idea.

National grid delivery efficiency from generator to house - 92%. Onboard charger efficiency 90%. Battery charging efficiency at Level 2 charge speeds - 98%. Battery discharging efficiency at high output during driving - 95%. Drive Inverter efficiency - 95%. Motor efficiency 90% - includes mechanical losses like gearbox as well.

This gives an overall efficiency all the way from where the generator connects to the national grid to turning the wheel on your BEV of about 65%. Considering how many steps there are in this process that is amazingly high. Each individual step is very efficient, there's just a lot of steps in the path of the energy...

Now consider electricity generated by CCGT gas generators - which is the bulk of generation in the UK at the moment - they are about 64% efficient, so that gives a total system efficiency all the way from natural gas going into the generating station to turning your BEV's wheel of 42% - nearly double the practical efficiency of the single step of a Diesel engine in a car converting Diesel into motion at the wheels of around 25% - which doesn't even take into account the energy consumed to drill oil, process it into diesel and ship it by sea/road to your car!

Needless to say a CCGT generator runs at a constant optimal speed and load to achieve optimal efficiency and has large and extensive emissions control systems far better than what you'll find on a car. A Diesel engine in a car has to cope with a wide range of ambient temperature, run time, engine temperature, rpm and load, which pushes the average efficiency way, way down on what it can theoretically achieve in optimal conditions.

For electricity generated from sources where the fuel is "free" and doesn't consume a physical resource, like wind or solar, it doesn't really matter what the generation efficiency is (solar is only about 20%) so this can effectively be ignored, bringing us back to the original 65% figure from generation to turning the wheel. No other system can come even close, not even Hydrogen, whose total efficiency from generation to wheel is less than half of a BEV.

When comparing ICE vs BEV emissions a lot of people disingenously compare the whole generation cycle emissions of a BEV to only the tailpipe emissions of an ICE. This is called the long tailpipe fallacy.

The reality is that ICE vehicles produce emissions at the point of use and generate a lot of emissions in having that fuel created and delivered to the car in the first place. It doesn't just come from the local service station by magic.

First someone has to drill for oil - which often entails building oil platforms (using fossil fueled ships or vehicles) then that crude oil has to be shipped somewhere - also on fossil fueled ships or vehicles, for processing. So you are burning fossil fuels to find and then ship crude oil.

Then you have to refine the oil into Diesel and Petrol and other useful distilates. That has a very high energy cost. You can either use electricity from elsewhere to do this, (so potentially a refinery could run on outsourced renewable generation! :lol: ) or you simply burn some of your own product to generate your own electricity and heat to feed back into your own processing systems - which is what most refineries do. So some of that oil you paid to find and paid to ship to the refinery now just gets burnt (wasted) at the refinery to produce the heat and electricity the refinery needs to operate...

Once you have Diesel and Petrol that is then shipped by pipeline (which takes some energy to pump) and/or by sea or land tankers - which are burning yet more Diesel to bring your Diesel or Petrol to you to put into your car. This entire chain is very energy and pollution intensive, and usually totally overlooked by BEV knockers. This whole process is so ingrained after 100+ years that we just take it as a given and don't give it any thought.

But there is a better way to do things than shipping physical fuel around the country by burning other fuel to do so - send electricity across the national grid. Then you are not shipping a physical product. Electricity gifts us a way to magically send energy from one place to another with extremely high efficiency, zero pollution and without shipping a physical thing. Lets use it.

Winner: BEV by a landslide, both on efficiency and pollution grounds.

3) Pollution caused by building a new car, and potentially by disposing of old ones.

This one is a bit harder to quantify due to so many variables and large variations between countries. General consensus among researchers is that actually manufacturing a BEV uses more energy and produces more pollution than manufacturing an ICE. Today.

This is primarily down to mining for minerals needed in batteries, since the battery is such a large chunk of the whole car both in cost and size. Research suggests that with current mining operations and power generation mixes a brand new BEV becomes "carbon equal" vs an ICE in about 5 years, although this figure is a bit higher or lower on a country by country basis based on generation mix.

In other words after driving a BEV for more than 5 years it produces less lifetime pollution when adding up all forms of pollution discussed above vs an ICE. And that assumes that production and electricity generation don't get cleaner over time which they no doubt will.

This also ignores a secondary knock on effect that will contribute improvements in the future as well. At the moment BEV manufacture is completely reliant on ICE and fossil fuel infrastructure to "boot strap" it.

When steel is delivered to the factory to produce cars, how does it get there ? Probably on a polluting Diesel train or truck... How is the factory run and heated ? Probably by CCGT generated electricity and natural gas. How do the workers at the factory get to work ? Probably by driving a Diesel or Petrol car....etc.

A lot of the pollution caused by manufacturing a car is "hidden" and ingrained in the processes of industry, of actually getting raw materials made and delivered, powering equipment, getting workers to the factory etc...

But what happens if BEV trucks become a thing due to the technological progress started by BEV cars, and they start delivering the steel to the factory without burning Diesel ? And what if the factory workers start driving BEV's ?

What if the electricity grid that powers the car factory gets more and more renewable generation ? etc...

Eventually these kind of knock on effects must happen and therefore the success in numbers of BEV technology will help to lower the pollution levels of industry as a whole...

Winner: Up front manufacturing pollution - ICE, at the moment. But that will change as BEV technology finshes boot strapping off the old and starts to change the wheels of industry itself to be cleaner. Also once there are enough old BEV's on the road that are due to be scrapped a recycling industry to recycle the raw battery materials will kick off and help offset the pollution caused mining for virgin minerals for batteries. At the moment there just aren't enough old BEV batteries to be recycled at scale yet.

Winner: Lifetime emissions including all factors - BEV, as long as the car lasts well beyond 5 years.
Last edited by Mandrake on 09 Nov 2019, 20:37, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Pug_XUD_KeenAmateur »

mickthemaverick wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 11:20it is quite clear from the response to Brexit that even within our own "United Kingdom" it would appear to be virtually impossible to unite on anything. :( :( :(
Wise words, I was only saying the same thing myself here to SWMBO this morning.

I'm reminded of the old adage "You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time"
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by bobins »

Mandrake wrote: 09 Nov 2019, 20:17
bobins wrote: 08 Nov 2019, 08:58 I think there's a common misconception regarding the 'greenness' of BEVs. They're not 'clean' and they're not 'green', they're just slightly less dirty than ICE vehicles.
It's not about what type of motive power your vehicle has, it's about the fact that you've got a vehicle in the first place.
I'm sure you have some facts and figures or research to back up this claim.... ? :wink:

Pollution produced by cars falls into these categories.

1) Emissions at point of use.

2) Pollution at the point of energy/fuel production and delivery of the energy/fuel to the car.

3) Pollution caused by building a new car, and potentially by disposing of old ones.

Winner: Up front manufacturing pollution - ICE, at the moment. But that will change as BEV technology finshes boot strapping off the old and starts to change the wheels of industry itself to be cleaner. Also once there are enough old BEV's on the road that are due to be scrapped a recycling industry to recycle the raw battery materials will kick off and help offset the pollution caused mining for virgin minerals for batteries. At the moment there just aren't enough old BEV batteries to be recycled at scale yet.

Winner: Lifetime emissions including all factors - BEV, as long as the car lasts well beyond 5 years.
I think you've actually backed up my assertion for me, although to be fair, I'm looking at the 'whole car' scenario. I have no problem with BEVs being cleaner and greener than ICEs, but owning and driving a BEV doesn't mean you're making the world better, it just means you're making it less worse than driving an ICE vehicle. No mass market vehicle - no matter what powers it - could be considered green or clean at any point when you consider how the raw materials that manufacture it get to the factory and you consider the thousands of people involved in its production - from the cleaner travelling to work to clean the office where they design it, to the bod getting to work that sticks the badge on the bootlid when it's built, to the person delivering it at the end. Then consider the fact that most cars spend most of their time doing nothing deteriorating on the driveway / parked up on the roadside / sitting in the car park at work / etc.
I buy a car with any motive power you care to mention, it spends most of its time doing nothing and deteriorating, I then get rid of it when it's no longer fit for purpose. That ain't ever going to be 'green' or 'clean' - not now, not ever.
There isn't a 'clean' or 'green' way to own a vehicle - just degrees of 'dirtiness' :(
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by Gibbo2286 »

I had a sombre thought :) how much co2 and air pollution is caused by burning bodies, should crematoria be banned? They produce nothing but smoke and ash.
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Re: Dump Your Deezel

Post by bobins »

It's an entirely reasonable point. Crematoria had to have filters and scrubbers fitted to their chimneys some time ago as they are a recognised source of pollution. There was a local authority a few years ago that wanted to use the excess heat produced at their crematorium to heat the leisure centre - something that I thought perfectly reasonable, but there was a public outcry over it so they shelved the idea.
Alkaline hydrolysis is also verrrrry slowly gaining a following - also called aquamation, biocremation, resomation, flameless cremation, or water cremation. "It's a process for the disposal of human and pet remains using lye and heat. The process is being marketed as an alternative to the traditional options of burial or cremation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_ ... _disposal)

You'll no doubt be pleased to know that there's Government guidance available for crematoria relating to:

- air emission limits
- emission monitoring methods
- best available techniques to control air emissions

"Crematoria are a ‘Part B’ activity under the local authority pollution prevention and control (LAPPC) regime."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ce-note-52
:-D
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