Interesting take on downstream emission controls!!

 

Follow-up: I poured in a 2.5-gallon jug of DEF this afternoon, remote-started the truck, and the DEF gauge was reading full when I got in the cab about a minute later. Checked my records and found the first 2.5-gal. fill was at 4,534 miles, and today's 2.5-gal. fill was at 9,064 ... almost exact same intervals. SOOOooo ... maybe I don't have an issue after all. Hope I didn't bore y'all with this.

 

It would be interesting to compare how much pollution and waste is generated producing, packaging, shipping, & storing DEF to the amount of pollution reduced in engines that use it.

I work for an equipment company that sells & uses DEF in off road equipment. We buy, sell, & use many, many pallets of DEF in 2.5 gallon boxes yearly. It comes to us in a diesel burning 18 wheeler, we have to fire up a gas or diesel powered fork lift to unload it, spewing pollutants. The DEF is on a wooden pallet (trees chopped down), wrapped in plastic (made from oil or natural gas). Each box is made of cardboard, inside is more plastic, a jug. When the jug is empty it and the box goes right to the landfill. The plastic that wrapped the pallet goes to the landfill too, I take the pallets home & burn them for heat. When a customer buys a couple of pallets of DEF, we load it on our diesel powered rollback & burn fuel & spew pollutants to deliver it. Think of all the pollution generated to do all that, & that does not even take in to account all the pollution generated to produce the stuff, or the precious water used.

I have to wonder if there is really any clean air gain at all. Your truck might pollute less, but there is a ton of pollution generated to produce & handle the DEF.

 

Reminds me of hearing about how the carbon footprint that's produced to manufacture a hybrid's or electric car battery is larger than what a fossil-fueled car would ever make.

 

I think its still a net positive change, there are millions and millions of these trucks putting down billions of miles each year. Plus the DEF containers are 100% recyclable, so hopefully they aren't going to the landfill. We gotta do something...

In either case, that's not a good enough argument to do nothing. What really gets me though is the massive city sized container ships crisscrossing the globe each day. 16 of those suckers are pumping out more sulfur/nitrogen oxide pollution than all of the worlds cars....someone start regulating the **** out of those things, shipping prices will increase, and manufacturing locally will start to look more enticing....but that would require global agreement, we can't even agree from state to state.

 

Almost all, if not all of those ships are foreign flagged. About all we could regulate is what's allowed in our ports. The USA has managed to regulate itself out of several industries. I recall looking at the plans to build the 1st Disney ship and another huge RCCL cruise liner. Found we can't build ships like them in the U.S. because their atriums are considered a fire hazard by the USCG (fire can travel vertically and quickly to multiple decks). Yet when they're built and flagged elsewhere, we allow them to use our ports to carry U.S. citizens.

 

My DEF jug does not come packaged in cardboard and I do put it in the recycle bin. If I were to purchase DEF at the pump there would be no packaging at all.

 

We've done what we can to lead here at least. Those ships run on Heavy Oil Fuel, its insanely dirty with massive amounts of sulfur in it, its also dirt cheap. But as of now, ships that come within 200 nautical miles of our shores have to switch over to marine diesel that's not that much different than whats in our trucks. A lot of those warehoused sized ship engines weren't designed for fuel like that with much lower viscosity, so ship builders have done some crazy stuff with chilling the fuel to increase viscosity, adding lubrication inside the engine at certain points....I guess were at least trying...

Its better than just putting your head in the sand and passing the buck to the next generation.

 

you might be right, might only stop regens. DEF might still be used, its not a huge deal at all. I went almost 8000kms on the first tank of the stuff and wasn't much to fill up. I personally will end up deleting still as get bothered by the regens so often and they always start when I am almost home so it never clears the thing and very rarely has my filter screen ever shown below 75%. Id also be hoping to get a little better fuel milage as it is one of my few complaints about this truck over my old 13 cummins

 

Sounds to me like you're confusing DEF (diesel exhaust fluid; breaks down NOx emissions) with DPF (diesel particulate filter; soot; regeneration), which have nothing to do with one another.

 

I purchase my DEF @ the pump. No packaging or waste and it's cheaper.

DEF is delivered in bulk via one of three ways: In a tanker (same as gasoline/diesel), in large portable (reuseable) bulk containers, and unit fill. None of these involve excess producing or disposing of packaging.

 

It is much worse to have DEf for the environment.
But there is huge money in selling it and developing and making the systems, so massive corporations will never let it die, it is too lucrative.
It is about the money grab, not the environment.
Heck just making all the parts to go on a truck, make the def, haul the def, and such is a massive amount of pollution.

 

You have a link to some data on that, or something I can read up on? That's the first I've ever heard that.

 

 

Personal note...I hate the smell of diesel. DEF helps eliminates it.