Diesel Is Going Greener, Cleaner And Less Smelly

Source: Sandy Bauers, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 2006

Diesel — the pairing of cheap fuel and reliable engines that belched black pollutants skyward over a century’s growth in the transportation industry — is turning greener.

A cleaner fuel, mandated to be in wide use by Sunday, has paved the way for the 2007 debut of new engines with vastly better emission controls.

The result is “the single greatest achievement in clean fuel since lead was removed from gasoline more than 25 years ago,” Stephen L. Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a teleconference yesterday.

The biggest benefit of the low-sulfur fuel is that it allows for new technology that traps and filters pollutants before they exhaust.

Scientists project that over the next quarter-century, the amount of particulates, nitrogen oxides and other pollutants spewed into the atmosphere by trucks and buses will be reduced by more than 90 percent.

And while prices are rising at the pump and on dealers’ lots, the marketing of a cleaner diesel has prompted an unlikely love-fest among regulators, industry and environmental advocates.

“We’re shifting from incremental improvements in a still-dirty engine to a very clean engine,” said Richard Kassel, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s clean vehicles and fuels project.

Ten years ago, after the national environmental group estimated that half the particulates on New York’s Madison Avenue came from a relatively small number of trucks and buses, it launched a “Dump Dirty Diesel” campaign. Signs posted on buses read: “Standing behind this bus could be more dangerous than standing in front of it.”

Diesel’s biggest sin has been soot — particles that can be inhaled, causing irritation. The smallest can travel deep into the lungs and interfere with the transfer of oxygen to the blood. Some of the particles and the chemicals they contain may get into the bloodstream.

Particle pollution is linked to decreased lung function and increased asthma, absenteeism, emergency-room visits, and heart attacks among people with heart disease. The fragile lungs of children, the elderly and the sick are most at risk.

The greening of diesel does not come cheap.

The EPA estimates implementation costs of $4.3 billion a year — a price tag the agency expects to be offset many times over by public-health benefits calculated at $70 billion a year. By 2030, when nearly all old engines will have worn out and been replaced, 20,000 premature deaths, tens of thousands of bronchial ailments, and more than 7,000 hospital visits will be prevented every year, according to the EPA.

The linchpin is fuel from which 97 percent of the sulfur has been removed. It burns cleaner, allowing a 12 percent reduction in emissions even in old engines.

The EPA’s phase-in mandated that the “ultra-low sulfur” fuel account for 80 percent of highway diesel sold by Sunday.

Critics predicted that the huge logistical changes required for refineries and fuel transport systems could not be completed in time to meet the deadline. In fact, deliveries began over the summer and the new formulation now makes up about 90 percent of highway diesel sold nationwide, the EPA said.

But the biggest benefit of the low-sulfur fuel is that it allows for new technology that traps and filters pollutants before they exhaust. That is a mega-shift for refrigerator engineer Rudolf Diesel’s 1892 invention, which proved that fuel could be ignited without a spark. A diesel has pistons and cylinders much like a gasoline engine, but no spark plugs. Diesel fuel ignites when the air-and-fuel mixture is compressed, raising the temperature.

Diesels are so fuel-efficient, powerful and durable that diesel trucks, trains, boats and barges move 94 percent of the nation’s consumer goods today, according to the Diesel Technology Forum, an industry trade group. Diesel buses transport 14 million people to their jobs and untold millions of children to their schools.

Over the years, however, more and more studies have quantified the effects of diesel air pollution. The EPA began to overhaul diesel regulations, and the industry went back to the drawing board.

In May, early models of the 2007 trucks rolled into Washington. While workers gave the exhaust pipes a white-handkerchief test, EPA administrator Johnson spoke of the “economic workhorse expanding into an environmental workhorse.”

“It was an opportunity to get together some real unusual bedfellows,” Kassel recalled.

Jim Winsor, executive editor of Heavy Duty Trucking magazine, refers to the improved engines as “a quantum leap forward.”

Still, the industry predicts new engines will cost $5,000 to $10,000 more, an increase of about 10 percent. Not surprisingly, truck buyers have been racing to get pre-2007 models.

The fuel will cost more, too, although how much is uncertain. Any increases could ripple out to many goods and services.

The EPA has estimated an increase of between 4 percent and 5 percent, which it says will be offset by lower maintenance costs and increased engine life.

Krapf Bus Cos. of Exton has been using the new fuel in its 1,000 suburban school buses since August. Fuel so far has cost about 10 percent more, and equipment costs are likely to rise 10 percent as well, board chairman Dale Krapf said.

“It’s a cost that’s affordable because it’s an improvement to our quality of life,” Krapf said.

Encouraged by government grants, the company has begun voluntarily installing new emissions equipment possible only with the ultra-low sulfur fuel on some buses bought since 2000. Similar grants are being awarded to school districts and municipalities to do likewise.

It’s all part of what the American Lung Association’s Paul Billings calls “a dramatic and significant cleaning of one of the biggest sources of air pollution in many communities.”

After decades of complaints about the dirty workhorses of American industry, the improvements “really change the face of diesel for all time,” said Mike Osenga, publisher of Diesel Progress magazine.

After the phase-in for trucks and buses, officials will next focus on non-road diesel: construction equipment, ships and trains.

Osenga and others even anticipate that diesel will drive the next generation of family cars, providing an alternative to hybrids.

Since diesel is 25 to 40 percent more efficient than comparable gasoline-powered engines, clean diesel “allows us to get the type of passenger vehicle that people will buy and drive,” said EPA spokesman John Millett.

It’s already happening in Europe. “If you’re 28 years old, buying your first car and you want to be environmentally conscious, you buy a diesel,” Osenga said.