The death of Diesel?

As if VW didn’t do enough to kill Diesel engines in cars has Mazda finished it off with a kick to the head?

**LINK**

I hope so.

If it only works for certain conditions, they should be able to select a constant speed, constant power situation as a generator for the batteries, so the hybrid vehicle could run on battery power at all times.

We seem to be obsessed by the damage done to the atmosphere by diesel cars. We never seem to get the true figures, which would include trucks, vans, buses and shipping - or is it me looking in the wrong place? Trawlers in the part of Britain where I live often have fuel capacities of over 30,000 litres. But that's burned at sea, where we don't see it so it doesn't matter, does it? And how much diesel does a big tanker burn on an average voyage? Sorry, I'm just getting cynical again.......

Mike, you hit the nail on the head. Here is an old article that may be of interest. **LINK**

But then it's easier to tax the multitudes or the poorer people whom own older cars than pick on the multinationals.

On top of that, as jet airliners spew their combustion products throughout the atmosphere they are burning a refined variety of diesel fuel (Jet A1 kerosene) - although there have been experiments using refined cooking oil; but after all the hype this seems more like a PR exercise to jump on the politically correct green bandwagon

* Danny M *

At the end of the day we're all making a bit of a mess and it all needs sorted out or we're going to regret it

I may be wrong, I think Mazda have developed a throttlelable stratified charge engine, truly the holy grail of IC engine design. Constant speed SC engines have been around for a while but getting them to work through a speed (rev) range for automotive applications has not happened yet. Sounds like Mazda have gone some way to achieving this.

I do wonder if this is a worthwhile use of resources when electric vehicles seem to be developing at such a rapid pace.

John

And how much diesel does a big tanker burn on an average voyage? Sorry, I'm just getting cynical again.......

Ships do pollute but have become a lot more efficient than they used to, every dollar saved is another dollar in your pocket if you own a shipping line

Being at sea used to be a great job 30 years ago but nowadays the job aint much fun because everything is mega huge and mega efficient, resulting in amazingly low prices for foreign made goods

The container market in particular has advanced at an amazing pace

Edited By Ady1 on 25/10/2017 08:26:54

As a diesel diehard I still intend to buy another car with a diesel up front. 40 years of driving oil burners that use a lot less fuel than any petrol engine car I have had and all the lovely torque. Petrol Passatt estate 26 MPG Diesel Mondeo estate 50 plus MPG. Which pollutes the most ?

Well, that's an easy one to answer. The Mondeo!

It isn't about the mpg, it's about what comes out of the exhaust.

Will the Mondeo chuck out twice the pollution ? It may do but the Passatt gobbles up twice the amount of fossil fuel. Somewhere we need to get a balance. The Passatt from 30000 miles used a lot of oil, by the time it was nearing 120000 miles it used a litre every 170 miles. No sign of smoke and passed MOT but must have polluted. The Mondeo now on 84000 has never used any oil.

Why is it when the subject of pollution from motor cars comes up some plonker starts banging on about ships!? Ships don’t drive down the high street choking people like cars.

Did you read the article linked in post #4?

Diesel can be made to run with very low emissions. But the car manufacturers only build vehicles to a price not a quality!

Vehicle manufacturers build vehicles to comply with the relevant local emissions standards in force at the time

Perhaps we should start to think like engineers? Firstly what problem are you attempting to solve and secondly what are the practical things you can do in the immidiate future. Inner city pollution isn't caused primarily by shipping but by road traffic. Globall CO2 emmisions have a contribution from ships and cars. It's easier to build hybrid or electric cars with easy access to charging points it's not so easy with ships. Hull design and shipping routes are optimised which helps and there have been attempts at sail assist but for the moment large high power deisels are the engine of choice for ships.

regards Martin

Yes, 30-40 years ago a life at sea was good, especially for a single bloke, good looking ships (none today look good), decent sized crews and long time in ports. The engineers used the time in ports to overhaul the main engines which had large maintenance requirements and the long time in ports meant an opportunity to 'relax' during a voyage.

But, the ships burnt absolutely crap fuel, so called bunker oil, so viscous it had to be heated just to move it never mind burn it, and containing just about all the nasties you could think of. In todays terms, the engines were not very fuel efficient. There was no scrubbing of exhaust gasses, very little heat recover from exhaust gasses apart from the token flue gas boiler as the accountants wouldn't go for waste heat exhaust gas driven turbo-alternator. Plenty of nasties in the rubbish thrown up into atmosphere in those days. Large crews and long time in ports (due to the ancient, out-of-date cargo handling regimes) cost the ship owner plenty, and wage and port rates were very on the up. Something had to change.

When the first container ships appeared at the beginning of the 1970's on the Australia run one container ship then did the work of six conventional ships, but were mainly steam powered, not as fuel efficient as diesel engined ships. As container ships switched to diesel power as diesel engines became ever more fuel efficient, less and less pollutants were emitted to the atmosphere, time in port was drastically reduced by a combination of a far more efficient cargo handling system and crews were reduced by increasingly better technology, automation and more reliable, less maintenance requirement machinery - frighteningly reduced in some cases to my mind!

But the result is what we have today. Yes ships do still pollute the atmosphere, but relatively far less per cargo ton/mile than ever before. At the moment there is no alternative for powering cargo ships (ignoring nuclear). If we want all the goods we currently seem to need and require, at the very low costs we now have, there is no alternative in terms of cost or pollution in shifting those goods than by sea. As Ady1 says above, progress today has been at an amazing rate, and as far as I can see, driven by a need to reduce overall costs and atmospheric pollution, with which one has to agree.

However, for us ex-sea going chaps, a way of life and the beauty of the old ships have gone forever, the British Merchant Navy reduced to a very small fraction of what it once was, by a combination of containerisation, modern technology and EU restrictions on our trade (on the trade we once did before we joined the 'Common Market', as it never was, with all our world-wide Commonwealth countries).

Chris

As mentioned above, the technology to control NOx has existed for some time and it is only the lack of legislation (and enforcement!) that has limited its adoption and the reductions achieved. There have been a few activists asserting recently that "there are no clean diesels" but life isn't black and white, clean or dirty - it's about degrees. And last time we looked, when you burn diesel or petrol, the carbon in the fuel is released as CO2. If you feel that CO2 is "dirty", then petrol is "dirtier" than diesel by 30% or so.

What the Germans did to diesel is a massive scandal. It must have set us back many years - and pretty much killed off the US market after years of investment.

Interesting recent paper about NOx reduction for EU vehicles - SCR, LNT and EGR.

And yes, the stuff they burn in ships ("bunker fuel" is rank stuff, the dregs left over after everything else valuable has been removed - but at least it's not released in the centre of cities.

Murray

I see that somebody refers to me as a "plonker" because I dared to bring shipping into the argument. Never mind - as a journalist I have been called much worse names than that! All I was trying to say was that it is a global problem and is not confined to the health of people living in cities.

As an aside, in the 1960s I lived in a very rural part of Africa where the air was clean. On my return I found that all of Europe smelled of diesel. And I mean all - nor just the cities.

Aha, another ex jolly Jack. Remembering the good old days!

Dave
The Emerald Isle

Mike:

Your post put me in mind of one of the RAF "Nice Types" portrayed in a book of that name. The last of these was Aircraftman Plonk:

The authors imagined that Plonk might have landed on his feet:

However, his "real-life" end was to be employed in a large store where his job was to be summoned to be publicly dismissed before complaining customers. As the firm's official culprit he was retained at a large salary - not such a plonker after all!