Zero Emissions Vehicle (was Electric Veh.)

[Matthew Lamari]

At 06:17 PM 8/21/96 EST, you wrote:
>     
>>Someone with a heavily modified engine would merely use more alcohol, 
>>not add to any pollution problem (except maybe water vapour/humidity? 
>
>There are other chemicals coming out of the tail pipe than just water 
>and CO2 when alcohol is burned.  Anytime you burn a fuel in the 
>presence of nitrogen you can create some oxides of nitrogen.  There 
>are also other non regulated emissions, which may or may not be more 
>harmful.
>
>Even clean burning fuels such as propane may not be so clean when not 
>properly set up.  When the automobile manufactures develop a vehicle, 
>they spend millions of dollars on research ensuring that the emissions 
>fall below the regulated targets.  When a small company develops a 
>retrofit kit for your gasoline vehicle to run on an alternative fuel 
>do you really think it runs cleaner?  What I am trying to say here is 
>that you cannot expect to put an alternative fuel into a gasoline 
>engine and get ultra low emissions.  Just as with gasoline, the 
>systems must be set up correctly to get a clean burn.

>
>Will McGonegal
>Electrical Engineer
>Mobile Sources Emissions Division
>Environment Canada
>wmcgonegal at rr.etc.ncr.doe.ca
>

Won't argue with your credentials. . . .

I didn't mean running alcohols in the very engines we have now.  Just meant
that something burning alcohol could retain the same style of engine
(reciprocating piston, valves) to keep costs down, perhaps reusing standard
parts from (previous?) model.  I mean, that's what car companies do now, to
keep costs down each subsequent year model is planned and they reuse so many
parts, or at least get them from a common source with others (e.g. fuel
pumps) as well as having different car models share parts.  Customizing the
computer for the fuel, as well as valvetrain, rings and compression,
mightn't cost so much if an existing block, crank, transmission can be used
in the first models.  Cooler burning may allow cheaper solutions to other
parts of the vehicle's design to compensate.

I've seen from some curve graphs (for petroleum) that by changing the mix
between extremes you go between nasty nitrogen emissions to nasty CO
emissions. At stoich is a reasonable compromise of each.  Perhaps with
certain alcohols staying further away from the Nitrogen side mightn't be so
as bad.  I'm just guessing here, you'd probably have the hard data on this
sort of thing in your division.


Also, when considering alcohol, I'm more interested in it for renewability
more than emissions.  No matter how much oil's down there, I just hate the
idea of the world running on and requiring something so finite.  Producing
it from sunlight via plant biochemical means just seems faster (faster than
waiting 10000 years for the sun to brew us up some more fossil fuels.)

I just think that, while getting a practical setup is difficult, it would be
equally difficult to overcome the car company's reluctance to do expensive
changes, and the incredible clout that the oil companies have in global affairs.

Hey, that's business.

Remember, even back in the very early 1900s, electric cars were in quite
common use.  Okay, they stunk; but so did the fuel cars.  The industry just
went the simplest path of using a readily available cheap fuel instead.
Just imagine if all the work went into the electric car instead.
Technologically, our electric and electronic knowledge utterly creams that
of 90 years ago.



Matthew.