"Bob Hobden" wrote in message
...

"IMM" wrote in message

Vehicles "are" a very large polluters,
especially when they are concentrated
in cities, where masses of people live.
Great progress is being made on
pollution from homes, in insulation
standards, boiler efficiency , etc,
yet there appears no immediate solution
to the filthy car.

Sorry!? I think you have that the wrong way round.

No.

The laws on vehicle pollution continue
to get tougher and tougher and the
manufacturers have had to comply to
continue to sell vehicles.

Not tough enough, the Internal combustion engine is only around 30%
efficient, and the emissions are highly polluting because of the small
explosions it creates (not continuous burn).

There has been massive strides in reducing
pollution from cars, per mile travelled.

They are still highly inefficient and pollute heavily.

Catalytic Converters, Electronic Engine Control,
lean burn engines, two stage ignition, direct
petrol injection, particle traps etc with more to
come.

They are twiddling around the edges of a flawed highly inefficient design.

We are significantly reducing overall
pollution figures despite a
massive increase in vehicles, now
all we need to do is get rid of all those
old polluting buses.

Pollution is still high and efficiency woefully low.

As for central heating, I thought the figures
were they produced 80% of the
greenhouse gasses produced in this
country.

Not in a million years. CH output is very low. Natural gas is the main CH
fuel, and this is the cleanest fuel by a mile.

Technology is there to make boilers very
efficient and very clean burning, at no great cost,
also by increasing insulation standards, a
homes emissions can be drastically reduced.
This can be done right now and people
wonder why it is not being implemented.
The car? Well apart from taxing larger engines,
not much at all can be done. There are some
advanced concept engines around,
but the big corps have not yet taken up
these ideas, tending not wanting
any change at all.

Not much can be done about cars?
What about the exhaust emmissions laws
which have worked amazingly and conuinue
to get tougher, the MOT emissions
tests, that's a damn sight more than is happening
with central heating.

Emission equipment still is just twiddling around the edges. See above.

Some people use boilers
that are decades old and with no maintanance.

A natural gas boiler can go for many, many years and still be quite clean
burning. Modern boilers are super efficient, and emissions super clean too.
The efficient of gas boilers rose by about 30% in a few years. Lets see if
GM can do that with a sill piston engine.

Fact is... All the major manufacturers and
significant others are working
flat out on Fuel Cell engines which produce
no pollution except steam.

MIT realsed a paper that fuel cells research has not come up with the goods
and diesel and gasoline engines will have top fill the bill in the short to
medium term. The US government gave billions to auto makers to squander.
They don't want change. They should not be given research money at all.
The technology should researched by other organisations and legislation to
make them adopt the technology.

Meanwhile they continue to develop
even cleaner reciprocating engines.

Still twiddling around the edges. No major breakthroughs yet, despite some
nice, more efficient, and running, concept engines around.

http://conceptengine.tripod.com/
http://www.deadbeatdad.org/eliptoid/

The Russians have come up a Rotary engine that is the reverse of the wankel,
Instead of a an elliptical chamber and triangular rotor, it is the reverse.
the seals are in the engine block, and can be readily changed. Good for
Heat and power applications. The Russians make two normal Wankel engines
for aircraft and helicopters.

The Australians have come up with a good improvement on the piston engine,
not using a crank shaft and or swivelling con-rods. No real figures as yet,
but production imminent. An auto engine is currently being tested in a
Proton car donated by Proton.
http://www.revetec.com/website/

Cars are even dirtier until the engine and
exhaust is hot. So, in many cases, when
the car is used to go to Safeway or the
school run, the thing is hardly up to temperature
before being switched off. In this period they
pollute heavily. The current piston internal
combustion engine needs totally replacing.

True but that's as much a social problem.

No. the engine is highly polluting until fully hot which takes many miles.



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