The death of Diesel?

Try going into London for the day, the first thing that assails you is the stink of diesel!, coming up from Kent which is fairly clean air on the North Downs as Lichen grows freely on fences and trees up here. In fact Lichen growing on roof tiles and trees and fences is a good sign of clean air. That is apart from the local farmers throwing hot chicken manure on the fields up wind of us. Certainly clears the Sinuses. Back to pollution, with more people the pollution will grow proportionately and one clear fact is that the local facilities for dealing with effluent and the like are over stressed. Every day a new product comes to the market adding to the problem of cleaning the effluent. Then black rubber dust on the roads, Everything adds it's quotient to the main figure of pollution. Just look at the Ocean plastic survey, the Gyers in the Ocean where the plastic and other rubbish rotates in mile wide areas. All from hydro carbon source, crude oil so it is all as bad as everything else.

Not 'jolly Jack', more ex sea-going engineer! Yes they were 'good old days', as old days always are when looking back though rose tinted specs. But nothing ever remains the same, it always evolves into something different.

The point I was trying to make was that today, although ship's diesel engines still pollute, it's not as bad was it was back 3-40 years ago and there is no real alternative to transporting what we want around the globe cheaply and as cleanly as is possible today; ships get a bad press by those jumping on the anti-diesel bandwagon, but the anti-diesel mob still want all their goodies and just don't face up to the facts that to get it there is no alternative to diesel powered ships. You either accept this reality, or do without (the goodies). In a real world that is. Unfortunately, many of the anti-everything brigade don't live in a real world, but still want their goodies. How else will they get it, but by diesel powered ships?

Chris

I think ChrisH makes an important point when he says that many of the anti-everything brigade don't live in a real world, but still want their goodies. In this part of Scotland there's always a chorus of protest when yet another wind farm is proposed, but you try telling them that without the development totally clean power sources they might one day have to do without TV, Broadband, the washing machine and the dishwasher and you get laughed at. There are even objections to the offshore windfarm on the Beatrice field, the cables from which come ashore in my home village, and even more moaning about a big offshore farm off Fraserburgh. People just will not accept that you can't have everything.........

Over twenty years ago my brother came over to England to visit and wanted me to take him to Kensington high street as he’d spent a lot of time there in his youth. We were only there about ten minutes when he asked me to get him away from there as he couldn’t stand the fumes. I was used to it at the time but having lived in Oz for about twenty years he couldn’t stand it.

These days I can often smell a diesel just by driving behind it, I think in many cases it’s the stench of ad blue or whatever they call it. I’m told it’s not really boiled piss but actually industrially produced urea but I’m not so sure!

It is much MUCH worse than you think, see this recent test http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/how_toxic_is_your_car_exhaust .Apparently, the new vehicles are much more polluting in real world driving than they were 5 or more years ago, due to changes in the way they are tested! Perhaps we should run diesels on vegetable oil, as Mr diesel originally intended.

Pollution is all around us, even those of us who live in rural areas away from the diesel fumes of urban areas still encounter pollution, I live in East Sussex and we are served by electric railways, look at any house or building that is near the railway, the window frames are all tinged dirty brown with the rust from steel particles shed from the action of train wheels on the rails and their use of disc brakes. There is no escaping pollution, it is all around us, is inhaling sulphur particles more dangerous than microscopic steel particles?

Dave

Fresh air - you can't beat it! One of the reasons I love spending time in central Brittany is that there is no big build up of population around and no big industries belching out smoke, there is not much to pollute the atmosphere between us and the Atlantic coast, the prevailing wind is SouthWest so we have plenty of really fresh air there straight off the Atlantic and it really does make a difference - you even sleep better for it.

Having said that France seems even more into diesel vehicles than us and the fuel price there reflects that, plus we have no gas in our village, oil would be a problem too and our small house is heated entirely with logs burnt in a glass-fronted wood burning stove, one fire heats the whole house, it's carbon neutral, there is little smoke, none in the house of course, very homily. One of our major problems in the UK is chronic overcrowding, never mind industry, the great number of vehicles and population density gives us the pollution on it's own.

Chris

You are right Mike - we have to be a realist to survive but so many are not realists but just fantasise their world, then wonder why it's not as they thought.

Chris

Brittany may be relatively pollution free but we in East Sussex are downwind when the prevailing wind is a southwesterly so where is our pollution coming from?

Dave

The isle of Wight .

Dave - possibly Portsmouth/Southampton or Le Harve for starters? There are oil refineries at both Southampton and Le Harve. Plus all the traffic between the Atlantic and East Sussex on down both sides of the Channel?

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 25/10/2017 22:48:24

The only pollution that I really worry about is from the cluster of French Nuclear Power Stations along the North French coast, you can't smell it or see it and it's the most dangerous.

Dave

I was in South-western France a few weeks ago, in a house in a village overlooking the Gironde, and we could see a nuclear power station from the balcony. Our host told us there was a plan for everyone in the locality to be issued with iodine tablets in the event of a leak. Makes you think...

One of our major problems in the UK is chronic overcrowding (ChrisH)

Question. What is the maximum rated population figure for the UK? I can't seem to find it on the makers plate.?

yours in anticipation Martin

Agreed, Martin. It seems that the population density of England is over 1,000 per square mile. Where I live in Scotland the population density per square mile is around 100. OK, I'm lucky in that I'm semi-retired and, with modern communications I could do my job from anywhere in the world I chose. But then, I'm sure lots of jobs could be done from home if employers allowed it. Sorry, I've got a bit off the subject here, but at least we have relatively clean air to breathe.

When you buy your next new diesel car, ask the dealer where the 'diesel additive' tank is, how much it holds, how much per litre it costs to refill and how often will it need to be refilled.

Then ask him where those details are explained in the handbook.

Don't be surprised, if , when you have problems with the DPF you are advised never to run the engine at less than 2000rev/min for any length of time.

And that is not in the handbook either.

When you buy your next new diesel car, ask the dealer where the 'diesel additive' tank is, how much it holds, how much per litre it costs to refill and how often will it need to be refilled.

I don't buy new cars (depreciation is far more than the running costs) but the additive tank is very much adjacent to the fuel tank, it holds only three litres (used to about 4.5l in older models) and needs refilling about every 80k miles. Not in the user manual as it requires resetting of the EMS, so a service item. And it won't last anywhere near as long if the fuel tank is continually topped up with small amounts.of fuel (not many know that, either!).

What annoyed me was the message of 'engine management fault' so take for diagnosis ASAP, without any specific warning. Another 400 miles would have affected nothing. That, and the smaller tank (refilled more often), smacks of dealership profits being raised by the car manufacturer. The previous model had a simple low level indication, so presumably no need for any computer intervention for resetting the EMS.

Oh, and the additive can be bought for about £16/litre.

I don't know what the UK population is and I suspect the official figure is a fair bit less than the actual. I believe it is roughly the same as France but France is very much bigger in area.

When I say the UK is overcrowded, yes there are great stretches of countryside that is still relatively empty but the urban areas are very crowded, and the SouthEast especially so. Just travel on any motorway or major road and look at the volume of traffic all day long. How many times have you driven into a town and just crawled along? Travel speeds on the roads in London are said to be slower now than back in the days when everything went by horse. All that traffic is constantly polluting the atmosphere. You can't just wake up and smell the coffee, the coffee smell is masked by traffic fumes!! And the more the population grows, the more the countryside is taken for houses for folk to live in and the more traffic there is on the roads.

Chris

I spent 3 years in London 40+ years ago, it was bad then, by all accounts it's worse now. Why does anyone want to live or work there? Yes the pay is more, but quality of life must be awful with pollution, commuting, overcrowding etc etc

When attending the Ally Pally show I always like to take in the view over London but it seems to get worse every year, the haze can make it hard to see very much detail in what should be a magnificent view.

Mike