S
SkyPup
Guest
The diesel fuel industry is at a critical juncture right now as it changes over to the production of ULSD fuels with improved cetane levels for the United States and Canada.
While virtually everyone agrees that diesel is by far the most fuel-efficient technology in the world today - and it's the only cost-effective, practical technology for doing much of the world's heavy mechanical work - its environmental performance needs dramatic improvement. This can only be accomplished using new ULSD fuel technology combined with diesel engine combustion engineering.
That's true even though today's advanced diesel engines are far cleaner than the smoke-belching diesels of decades ago. The problem: Even smokeless diesels aren't clean enough for pending air pollution regulations without improved diesel fuel technologies.
What's more, while diesels are the only cost-effective technology today for making a significant impact on reducing "global warming" emissions from motor vehicles, that's not good enough for regulators and legislators. Rather, diesels will have to meet regulatory/legislative standards that are close to "zero" tailpipe emissions, especially on smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM) and "toxics" - the organic compounds in diesel exhaust.
Diesel engines won't achieve such ultra-clean standards with "dirty" diesel fuels containing high amounts of sulfur, high concentrations of aromatic compounds and low cetane. That's because sulfur compounds not only poison advanced exhaust treatment catalysts, but also seem to act as a critical "condensation carrier" of the volatile, ultra-fine organic PM that can escape even the most efficient PM "soot" filter. In addition, a minimum of 50 cetane and 10% aromatic content is required to decrease emissions by up to one-half while at the same time improving performance and fuel economy.
Scientists are just now beginning to describe these complex, ultra-fine PM phenomena that arise from diesel, gasoline and other combustion sources. Meantime, health researchers have launched many new studies to try to understand what fine PM exposure can mean for humans, with preliminary findings pointing to possible health effects including elevated cancer risk, degradation of lung function, possible immunologic reactions, and possible asthmatic impacts.
As far as government regulators are concerned, the prudent strategy is: Take diesel exhaust out of the health-concern equation, by employing cleaner exhaust treatment systems and cleaner ULSD fuels.
The good news is: Diesels can indeed become ultra-clean, even as clean as some of the proposed alternatives such as natural gas, gasoline, and even electric, once the emissions from electric power plants are figured into that equation. To meet this challenge, an avalanche of research on clean-diesel technology is underway, sponsored by government agencies, major engine companies, automakers, catalyst developers and, for fuels, oil companies, refiners, and their technology suppliers.
The search for ultra-clean diesel is far from over, as new discoveries and breakthroughs appear constantly. In the past several months, new breakthroughs appeared on the horizon for combined PM/NOx traps, non-thermal plasma/catalyst exhaust treatment systems, new refinery desulfurization technologies, and lower-cost ways of producing ultra-clean, Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquids (GTL) diesel fuels with virtually no sulfur and 70+ cetane levels.
Large, "Fortune 500" companies - as well as small, emerging-technology companies - are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into research & development worldwide on these clean-diesel technologies.
Ultimately, tens of billions of dollars - possibly well over $100 billion - will be spent producing the ultra-clean diesel vehicles, engines, ULSD refineries and GTL diesel plants in the coming decades.
It's an enormous task, and in the aggregate, it's an enormous risk, too. That's because other technologies-such as fuel cells-are also appearing on the horizon. These technologies might require a dramatically different sort of vehicle/engine industry, and quite different fuels.
But until practical alternatives appear, there's really no economic alternative to diesels for a multitude of applications. That's true for big ocean vessels, tugs, commercial/recreational vessels, railroads, trucking, bus transport, construction, mining, agriculture, logging, distributed power generation, and, in many parts of the world, personal vehicle transportation. Lighter cuts of diesel fuel, such as jet/kerosene, also power the world's jet aircraft, along with a variety of industrial turbines and space heating systems. In short, middle distillate fuels do the world's heavy lifting.
Diesel cars are increasingly popular in much of the world, because of much greater fuel efficiency (compared to gasoline) and recent technology leaps that provide consumers with performance previously obtainable only with gasoline engines. The use of ULSD is mandatory in these vehicles to achieve required levels of emissions, performance, and economy.
Eventually, ultra-clean diesel vehicles could migrate to areas of the developing world where diesel vehicles suffer a (deservedly) terrible reputation for excessive smoke and smell. These new cleaner-diesels could become a solid growth opportunity for the world's engine makers, automakers and refiners, as diesels can offer the sort of fuel efficiency demanded by especially cost-conscious consumers in emerging markets.
Clean-diesels also could provide a hedge to governments worried about global-warming, as they offer an efficiency unmatched by other power sources. What's more, diesels could help reduce many countries' vulnerability to potentially shaky oil imports from politically volatile areas of the world. Policies promoting the growth of a clean-diesel vehicle fleet, rather than a conventional gasoline fleet, would mean about a 30% improvement in fleet vehicle fuel efficiency - a huge gain not obtainable by even the most advanced gasoline direct-injection technology.
Change is in the air, both literally and figuratively. For diesel technology and fuels, the changes will be the greatest since Rudolph Diesel invented the compression-ignition engine more than 100 years ago.
"Clean" and "diesel" are about to be spoken in the same breath. That's a change everyone's demanding, and ought to celebrate.
While virtually everyone agrees that diesel is by far the most fuel-efficient technology in the world today - and it's the only cost-effective, practical technology for doing much of the world's heavy mechanical work - its environmental performance needs dramatic improvement. This can only be accomplished using new ULSD fuel technology combined with diesel engine combustion engineering.
That's true even though today's advanced diesel engines are far cleaner than the smoke-belching diesels of decades ago. The problem: Even smokeless diesels aren't clean enough for pending air pollution regulations without improved diesel fuel technologies.
What's more, while diesels are the only cost-effective technology today for making a significant impact on reducing "global warming" emissions from motor vehicles, that's not good enough for regulators and legislators. Rather, diesels will have to meet regulatory/legislative standards that are close to "zero" tailpipe emissions, especially on smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM) and "toxics" - the organic compounds in diesel exhaust.
Diesel engines won't achieve such ultra-clean standards with "dirty" diesel fuels containing high amounts of sulfur, high concentrations of aromatic compounds and low cetane. That's because sulfur compounds not only poison advanced exhaust treatment catalysts, but also seem to act as a critical "condensation carrier" of the volatile, ultra-fine organic PM that can escape even the most efficient PM "soot" filter. In addition, a minimum of 50 cetane and 10% aromatic content is required to decrease emissions by up to one-half while at the same time improving performance and fuel economy.
Scientists are just now beginning to describe these complex, ultra-fine PM phenomena that arise from diesel, gasoline and other combustion sources. Meantime, health researchers have launched many new studies to try to understand what fine PM exposure can mean for humans, with preliminary findings pointing to possible health effects including elevated cancer risk, degradation of lung function, possible immunologic reactions, and possible asthmatic impacts.
As far as government regulators are concerned, the prudent strategy is: Take diesel exhaust out of the health-concern equation, by employing cleaner exhaust treatment systems and cleaner ULSD fuels.
The good news is: Diesels can indeed become ultra-clean, even as clean as some of the proposed alternatives such as natural gas, gasoline, and even electric, once the emissions from electric power plants are figured into that equation. To meet this challenge, an avalanche of research on clean-diesel technology is underway, sponsored by government agencies, major engine companies, automakers, catalyst developers and, for fuels, oil companies, refiners, and their technology suppliers.
The search for ultra-clean diesel is far from over, as new discoveries and breakthroughs appear constantly. In the past several months, new breakthroughs appeared on the horizon for combined PM/NOx traps, non-thermal plasma/catalyst exhaust treatment systems, new refinery desulfurization technologies, and lower-cost ways of producing ultra-clean, Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquids (GTL) diesel fuels with virtually no sulfur and 70+ cetane levels.
Large, "Fortune 500" companies - as well as small, emerging-technology companies - are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into research & development worldwide on these clean-diesel technologies.
Ultimately, tens of billions of dollars - possibly well over $100 billion - will be spent producing the ultra-clean diesel vehicles, engines, ULSD refineries and GTL diesel plants in the coming decades.
It's an enormous task, and in the aggregate, it's an enormous risk, too. That's because other technologies-such as fuel cells-are also appearing on the horizon. These technologies might require a dramatically different sort of vehicle/engine industry, and quite different fuels.
But until practical alternatives appear, there's really no economic alternative to diesels for a multitude of applications. That's true for big ocean vessels, tugs, commercial/recreational vessels, railroads, trucking, bus transport, construction, mining, agriculture, logging, distributed power generation, and, in many parts of the world, personal vehicle transportation. Lighter cuts of diesel fuel, such as jet/kerosene, also power the world's jet aircraft, along with a variety of industrial turbines and space heating systems. In short, middle distillate fuels do the world's heavy lifting.
Diesel cars are increasingly popular in much of the world, because of much greater fuel efficiency (compared to gasoline) and recent technology leaps that provide consumers with performance previously obtainable only with gasoline engines. The use of ULSD is mandatory in these vehicles to achieve required levels of emissions, performance, and economy.
Eventually, ultra-clean diesel vehicles could migrate to areas of the developing world where diesel vehicles suffer a (deservedly) terrible reputation for excessive smoke and smell. These new cleaner-diesels could become a solid growth opportunity for the world's engine makers, automakers and refiners, as diesels can offer the sort of fuel efficiency demanded by especially cost-conscious consumers in emerging markets.
Clean-diesels also could provide a hedge to governments worried about global-warming, as they offer an efficiency unmatched by other power sources. What's more, diesels could help reduce many countries' vulnerability to potentially shaky oil imports from politically volatile areas of the world. Policies promoting the growth of a clean-diesel vehicle fleet, rather than a conventional gasoline fleet, would mean about a 30% improvement in fleet vehicle fuel efficiency - a huge gain not obtainable by even the most advanced gasoline direct-injection technology.
Change is in the air, both literally and figuratively. For diesel technology and fuels, the changes will be the greatest since Rudolph Diesel invented the compression-ignition engine more than 100 years ago.
"Clean" and "diesel" are about to be spoken in the same breath. That's a change everyone's demanding, and ought to celebrate.
