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Originally Posted by California98Civic
With diesel engines and their ultra-low-sulfur fuel now green enough even to meet California rules, one remaining environmental objection is that the fuel still starts from a barrel of nonrenewable petroleum.
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A minor inconvenience.
The main issue is really particulate matter.
We've all been led to believe particulate filters solve that problem.
Well guess what, they don't.
They actually make it worse, by further reducing the size of the particles, below the size that gets measured.
The net results ?
The particulate matter doesn't merely end up all the way down into your lungs (bigger particulates don't make it in as deep), but ultimately finds its way into your blood.
Ain't that nice ...
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A possible next step is renewable biodiesel made from feedstocks including soybean oil, animal fats and even recycled fry oil.
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Not with today's crop of DPF applications - at least those we've seen in Europe.
Just about all current DPF diesels can't run biodiesel beyond the 5 or 7,5% biodiesel that we have in regular diesel here in Europe.
Even then, there's issues with oil dilution etc. due to biodiesel.
Hägar's had 12% diesel in the oil due to excessive DPF regeneration.
Effectively, the advent of DPFs has killed off a triving German 100% biodiesel production - mostly Rapeseed Methyl Ester in Germany.
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B20 (20 percent), which Minnesota has mandated starting in 2015.
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That's going to be fun ...
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Biodiesel ages and degrades more quickly than gasoline, said William Woebkenberg, fuels policy director for Mercedes-Benz USA. Poor-quality biodiesel, especially if it contaminates engine oil, can damage engines or fuel systems, he said
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Excess "oil" if left in place, gets into the engine breather, which is linked to the air intake for pollution control.
That means you'd effectively get fuel down the air supply ... in a diesel.
Shutting the engine down in those cases doesn't help.
It just blows itself up unless you tear off the "air" hose / breather connection.
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The company is looking to resolve the issue, perhaps by shortening service intervals so dealers can keep a closer eye on customer’s engines.
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They'll be swapping the oil even more often, and likely run with reduced oil levels - that's what Volvo did.
And that's just with B5 ...
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Chevrolet has simply worked around the problem: its Cruze Turbo Diesel is the nation’s only passenger car designed to run on blends of up to B20
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Do they use a different DPF burn-off system ?