I hear all this talk about lowering particulates in the new diesels and diesel fuels. What is a particulate? What are they made of that is deadly to the human race and the planet that they are trying so hard to get rid of them? I'm assuming that it has some thing to do with sulfur since everybody is making a big deal out of ultra low sulfur fuels. I thought sulfur was ok they used to use sulfur drugs to treat just about everything, in some countries they still do. Just down the road from here there are some sulfur springs that people actually pay to swim in and have been for over a century. You can smell the water and the people that swim in it from a mile away. It's supposed to have some kind of healing properties. Diesels don't put out any green house gasses so I guess they had to make up some other BS to use to bash diesels. I can just imagine the test they used to prove diesel exhaust was bad. Mr. greenie scientist-"We place several mice in a closed envirionment with only source of air came from a diesel engine that we ran 24/7. After only a few days all the mice were dead because of the diesel exhuast. We also forgot to feed them, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with their deaths".

 

particulate=> "soot"

 

A particulate simply means a particle (or piece) of something. As it is referred to in diesel emissions, it is solid matter (not gaseous) that falls to earth and does not stay suspended in the air. In other words, as polarbear put it: It's Soot.

 

Ever hear of CO2? It's a greenhouse gas and a component of diesel exhaust.

A particulate is a particle. Diesel exhaust has small, hard lumps of carbon in it. These particles can do nasty things to lungs if they are breathed.

 

Yup, and that there soot gets deep into your lungs and stays there, and a certain percentage of folks end up with trouble because of that. Not good.

Sulfa or sulpha drugs (http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/572_4.html) are not the same thing as sulfur found in diesel fuel. EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

Not sure of the value of sulfur springs, but it sounds like a moneymaker for the owner of the springs, so I'll leave it at that.

Diesels don't put out greehouse gas? So, there is no CO 2 in the exhaust? No CO? What about nitrides of oxygen, or Nox generated by the high combustion temps in an oil burner?

As for your characterization of the methods used to test for toxicity, all I can say is "Gosh, do you know anything other than how to complain?"

I think the vilification of diesel is a mistake that has been made in the quest for better energy use and overall lowering of emissions, but your best bet to help the cause would be to continue reading comic books in the corner or go back to school and either get your money back or try again to learn something.

 

I'm sorry you did not like my characterization of the greenie scientist. If you actually read the study they did trying to link diesel particulate emissions to cancer you would find out I was not that far of. The levels they exposed the lab rats to were 50 times greater to any they would ever find in nature barring living next to an erupting volcano. As for the green house gas comment I apologize I mis-worded that I should have said extremly low green house gas emissions compared to gas engines. I should not even use the green house gas statment either because that whole thing is a bunch of whoey. There is not even enough indisputable scientific evidence to call it a theory, yet whole nations are changing their environmental policies because of it, but I'm drifting here. Sorry Doctor, but sulfa drugs, sulphur, and sulfur are related. Sulfur drugs are used mostly to treat pain (dimethyl sulfoxide and methylsufonylmethane), sulpha to treat infections, they are all related "I did not get that from a comic book". Sulfur is also found in alot of the foods you may eat eggs, meat, poultry, fish, garlic, onions, brussels sprouts, asparagus, kale, and wheat germ. Maybe we should outlaw this stuff to what would happen if a brussels sprout field caught on fire, hundreds could die. We then could move on to outlawing other things that contain this deadly chemical such as sulfur mud baths and sulfur baths (balneotherapy). Sure it's been used for thousands of years to treat pain and other ailments, but now we know better. Here is a real kicker one of the things they used sulfur baths to treat for thousands of years were allergies and respiratory disorders. JFYI they smell bad because of the sulfur dioxide that is naturaly produced. Now the greenie scientists are saying that sulfur gases in the environment "may" actually increase your chances of developing allergies, asthma, and other respiratory illnesses. Accourding to these studies this sulfur gas comes from coal-fired power stations and diesel burning engines. Of course this must be a different type of gas sulfur gas that is produced naturaly. What gets me upset every thing that comes out of the tail pipe on my good old oil burner is produced in nature in greater quantities than all the diesel trucks in the world. I guess it works this way Mother Nature=good kind Mankind=bad kind. Low sulfur fuels, EGRs, and particulate filters are not going to make a lick of difference.

EDIT- Flamings and language removed, they are not allowed here.

 

Diesels produce similar amounts of "greenhouse" gas as a gasser. The "greenhouse" gas is CO2 or carbon dioxide, a product resulting from the combustion of hydrocarbon fuel in air which contains oxygen. So called "greenhouse gas" because of the effect it has in the atmosphere of holding in infrared radiation and heat similar to glass in a greenhouse. The soot actually reduces the amount of CO2 because it is made of carbon atoms that have not combined with oxygen. If the soot or particulate emissions are reduced the materials will most likely be filtered or converted to CO2 by some sort of extra/improved combustion or catalytic reaction.

Higher concentrations of materials under study are often used in scientific studies to speed up the effects of the materials so they can be observed in our lifetime.

Natural sources of CO2 due to volcanoes, decomposition, forest fires, etc, is nothing we can do anything about. We CAN do something about the man made emissions.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwa...ent/index.html

 

The studies I have looked at show that minus the soot, diesel exhaust is indeed "better" for the environment than gasser exhaust. The biggest problem with soot is in highly concentrated areas, where it adds to the smog problem and of course is very bad for the lungs. I live in a very rural area and if everyone by me had diesels it would not affect air quality negatively at all. However, with the new technology they will be adding to diesels, they can virtually eliminate the soot problem. For only $500 extra.

 

The International Agency for Cancer Research has listed diesel particulate matter as a probably human carcinogen through its research of inhalation studies with rats. They define diesel particulate matter as solids from exhaust emissions that are 1 micrometer in size or smaller.

 

Here is what the learning center at Noria has on it:
http://65.194.234.234/dictionary/def...&alphasearch=P

They teach tribology and are a certifying agent for lube engineers.

 

and all this time, i thought emissions were kind of a common sense thing.

mmm...i burn something, the result is gasses that if i breathe great quanities of it, i will die, mmmmm...multiply this times millions then times dozens of years...mmmm.....common sense would say it has some sort of an effect on the enviroment.

 

Sitting around a campfire this weekend loaded me up with particulates but somehow it was worth it... -Got to die of something...

 

Yes, we all get to die of something. If you are comfortable with lung cancer or emphysema at 60 or so, well, I'm happy for you.

Personally, I'd like to hit the century mark, and not cough my brains out in the process.

Diesel engine technology will contine to improve with respect to emissions, but the resistance will remain due to the old smokers still out there and the memories of the real old timers darkening the sky under load. (which I used to think was really cool....)

 

Very little chance of dying at 60 from those two since I am almost there and no signs of them. Occasional exposure to smoke from a campfire is much different from diesel particulates. My other exposures to extreme industrial carcinogens and industrial irritants like micro-balloons and other powders will probably kill me long before the campfire does. I am sorry if you can't understand the pleasure of sitting around a campfire and talking to other adults under a starry sky...

 

Common sense only works if have the actual facts instead of speculation and a bunch of very biased studies. The lab rat studies people love to quote so often usually involve exposing the rats to higher concentrations than would ever be found in the environment. The scientist defend this by saying that this just speeds up what would happen anyway givin a 175 years of normal exposure. How about this for fact CO2 has a molecular weight of 44.01 air a molecular weight of 28.9. CO2 is weighs alot more than air thats why they use it in fire extinguishers, because it stays close to the ground and suffocates the fire. It's the same reason smog hangs close to the ground and in the valleys. It's also why the current administration "G.W." does not suscribe to the greenhouse effect nonsense. Nasa has conducted high altitude studies for years and have not shown any increase in CO2 in the upper atmosphere. The greenies use samples from ice cores and other ground level sources to support a hyphothesis of something they claim is going on several miles up. CO2 and particulates "soot" do not find there way up to the upper atmosphere where the greenhouse effect is supposedly taking place. They do however play a part in air quality in urbanized areas CO2 anyway soot settles to the ground pretty quick or sticks to the side of your truck. Take a look at Greece for example, they have banned diesels within the cities in an effort to improve the air qaulity. They however failed to do their homework, very few people in Greece owned diesels. They speculated that because diesels put out soot and looked dirty that they were the cause of the poor air qaulity. Needless to say the air quality did not improve. Despite most peoples first impressions diesels are cleaner than just about any gasser out there. IMO if everybody drove diesels the air quality in urban areas would improve. As far as diesels causing health problems I see it every day my father (78) and father in-law (62) were both OTR truckers for about 50 years each and neither one of them can hear worth a darn, they however have no breathing problems. My father in-law also has some health problems related to years of eating truck stop food. There you have two people who have worked around diesels their for a very long time and have no breathing problems. They must be freaks of nature or something with as much diesel fumes and soot they have breathed in over the years they should be dead according to the greenies.