California's 15-year Air Quality Improvement Strategy
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 03.30.06
California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) projects that air quality measures funded by the State's Strategic Growth Plan will eliminate 360,000 tons of air pollution over the next 15 years. The plan's air quality benefits stem from investments of $2 billion to clean up the largest sources of air pollution in California - diesel trucks, trains, ships, and port equipment. In addition to the $2 billion for air quality measures, the Strategic Growth Plan invests $105 billion in projects that will relieve traffic congestion and reduce Californians' exposure to air pollution along the state's highways. These projects include $140 million annually to replace old, dirty diesel engines with new, cleaner models, the Hydrogen Highway Initiative to build the infrastructure needed to support zero-emission hydrogen vehicles, and removing 15,000 gross-polluting vehicles from the road by July 2006
Please be advised that this is a bit misleading:
The largest reason bad emissions from diesel trucks is the quality of the petroleum diesel fuel that is currently available in the U.S.
In the U.S. currently Diesel fuel has on average 500 ppm (parts per million) of sulfur. This is the Number one reason (bad component) of petroleum diesel fuel.
To put that in perspective, the amount of sulfur in diesel fuel in Africa on average is less than 350 ppm and in Europe it must be below 50 ppm!!
But there is good news for the U.S. Starting Fall 2006 all Diesel fuel sold in the U.S. must have less than 50 ppm as well!
This will lead to the largest possible reduction in diesel emissions all without California having to spend a penny.
With this improvement + the changes that California is making will definitely be a good thing for California, this step (getting rid of almost all of the sulfur in Diesel fuel) will have a much more drastic positive benefit for the environment in California and the U.S. in general than the changes California is looking to make.
Note: Biodiesel does not contain any sulfur!
"This will lead to the largest possible reduction in diesel emissions all without California having to spend a penny."
Wait a second. The new federal diesel rules are for both fuels and engines. The main reason that the sulfur content is being lowered is to enable the new emissions technology on vehicles model year 2007 and later - things like NOx absorbers.
So one of the things the state is doing is spending money ($140 million/yr) retrofitting vehicles. Keep in mind that even 2006 model year vehicles don't meet the new standard and heavy vehicles have average lifespans in the 30 year range. So there's a significant number of heavy vehicles which will remain on the road that don't meet the new standards.
Plus you have to factor in the increase in fuel costs (about 5 cents per gallon for the new diesel). The state certainly pays for some transit as well as school buses, work vehicles, etc -- some directly, some indirectly. And of course the costs of the new standards (about $3-4 billion annually on a national basis) get passed on to consumers in the end.
The new fuel by itself is only going to reduce SO2 levels regardless of the engine. Also keep in mind there is a transition period towards 100% compliance with the fuel standards by 2010.
The EPA has all the gritty details of the program here:
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/diesel.htm
Three's a nice little overview of it here:
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/regs/hd2007/wrkshop1/overview.pdf
Of course, the costs of compliance with the program are going to be offset by lower health/externality costs, as they mention in that overview.
yep, I have checked out the EPA guidelines for the new low sulfur diesel fuel.
I neglected to also point out that that there is a vast aray of very cool advanced diesel technology that is in Europe (where over 50% of all new cars sold are diesel) that has not been able to come over to the U.S. b/c of the high sulfur content of U.S. petroleum diesel fuel.
With the low sulfur diesel fuel in the U.S. (much) cleaner diesel engines available in Europe will be able to be brought over to the U.S.
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Great dialog happening!
Wanted to interject that small diesel emission particulates, the kind our lungs can not reject efficiently, are handled by the new EPA standard. Sulfur is only a part of the issue. Particulate control is critical to asthmatics and for reduction of lung disease risk in developed areas. Europe has a truck and car fleet dominated by diesels that predate the better engine designs you mention. We need particulate filters on existing vehicles both sides of the Atlantic. So far it looks as if the US is actually way ahead of the Europeans on particulate control.
Couldn't agree more, the particulates do need to be controled and diesel engines do produce more of them than an otto cycle engine and it's always good to update fleet emissions equiptment for large trucks (if they are Otto Or if Diesel).
My main point is that the quality of the diesel fuel is what makes the biggest difference in how much pollutants are produced.
As an example, Biodiesel has no sulfur (as I stated above) but also, if you run biodiesel in a diesel engine you will only get 10% of the amount of pollutents that you would if you were running regular petroleum diesel in the same engine!
I also totally agree that updating emmissions equiptment on potentially 30 year old equiptment for a diesel engine OR for an otto cycle engine will be benificial.
I just feel that diesel (as a hole) has been given a bad name as a polluter when a modern diesel enging (VW was first with the TDI starting in 1989 with a Turbo Direct Injection engine) is actually about the same (polution wise) as an Otto Cycle engine!
Yes, some types of pollutants are higher with a diesel than an Otto Cycle. But what people often forget is that Otto Cycle engines are bigger polluters for other types of pollutents than a Diesel engine as well!
Have to agree with you on this point as well, very fun discussion : )
"if you run biodiesel in a diesel engine you will only get 10% of the amount of pollutents that you would if you were running regular petroleum diesel in the same engine!"
Actually, for heavy duty vehicles using 100% biodiesel, NOx emissions increase 10%, CO and PM go down a little under 50%, and HCs go down a little less than 70%.
There's a really detailed EPA study on this here:
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/models/analysis/biodsl/p02001.pdf
It's interesting because they break out different types of biodiesel, emissions effects by degree of blend, as well as look at heavy duty, light duty, and offroad engines.
The biggest gain is that the effective CO2 output of pure biodiesel is nil, since it's closed loop.
Joseph,
Thank you for the figures on heavy diesel vehicles and emissions.
I was getting my figure of "only 10% of the pollutants of petroleum diesel from "From the Fryer to the Fuel tank" by Josh Tickell. Perhaps this figure applies to diesel light trucks and cars only?
I'll definately look at the link you provided on the EPA Study!
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/models/analysis/biodsl/p02001.pdf
Can you provide a link to comparisons in emissions between F250 (large truck) engine in gas vs diesel. Ideally we should compare gas to low-sulfur diesel...but not sure if such information exists.