The dirty cost of one man's hypermiling?

[cfg83]

Hello -

Since we're talking about cargo ships now, this seems kind of neat :

Could we Clean Up Air Pollution from Cargo Ships with... H2O?! : TreeHugger

Though it sounds bizarre, mixing water into the fuel helps it to burn better. The heat of combustion breaks water molecules up. The resulting hydrogen atoms help to split hydrocarbon molecules, making them more combustible, while the oxygen released goes on to combine with the carbon, ensuring that more of it burns. [...]

His answer is to use a surfactant. [...] a mixture of oleic acid (a fatty acid found in various vegetable oils) and nitrogen-containing compounds called amines. This mixture dissolves readily in diesel fuel and binds water to it without any need for stirring. The water droplets themselves can be as small as a nanometre (a billionth of a metre) across. That they are so small helps stabilise the emulsion. The result is, in effect, a liquid sponge, and means the mixture can be stored indefinitely, like ordinary diesel, without risk of separation.

The result, when it is burned, is the near-complete abolition of soot, and a reduction of up to 80% in nitrogen-oxide emissions. The surfactant itself also burns without creating emissions beyond water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

CarloSW2

[SentraSE-R]

I wonder why the article targets Maersk - a company that's doing more than it officially needs to, to reduce the impact of its operations

Simple. The article was about the largest cargo ships, and Maersk owns the eight largest. Note, however, that supertankers are nearly triple the dead weight tonnage of the largest cargo ships.

[euromodder]

Combustion heat does not split water.
It turns it into steam.
The steam then dampens peak combustion temperatures - I use this feature daily at work - which will help in reducing NOx.

Introducing more Nitrogen (in the amines), and claiming that it'll convert to N2 instead of adding NOx during combustion is also more than a wee bit weird given that plain N2 will turn into NOx when the temp is right..

[SentraSE-R]

Kind of disappointing. This LCA indicates the infrastructure and production environmental costs of making gasoline are only ~1/3 of the environmental costs of operating the vehicles consuming the gasoline (Figure 2).

The greenhouse gas emissions from infrastructure and production operations do exceed the emissions from operating the vehicles (Figure 3).

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by SentraSE-R

Kind of disappointing. This LCA

The greenhouse gas emissions from infrastructure and production operations do exceed the emissions from operating the vehicles (Figure 3).

What is dissappointing is that the article like all of them I read are incomplete.
It is mainly focused on how much energy and CO2 is being used/generated.

Emissions as they define it is CO2, they are not taking into account individual emissions (like sulphur and nox), benezene or VOC either.

[SentraSE-R]

Time for an update. I quit clean hypermiling at the end of April, after completing a 3664 mile round-trip to Texas with a non-hypermiler. We set the cruise control to 60 mph, but did no more. Sum total of my clean hypermiling was 6600 miles at 43.6 mpg, about a 6 mpg penalty for not shutting the engine off.

I haven't updated my mileage logs, but I'm averaging 50.1 mpg on my current 1300 mile trip to New Mexico, v. 41.1 mpg on the 3664 RT to Tx. 9 mpg for just P&G - I'll take it.

[PaleMelanesian]

Is that P&G with the engine on or off?

[mcrews]

P&G is an engine on function

[SentraSE-R]

Engine on, except on the long downhills, Andrew.

[SentraSE-R]

I'm back! 50.2 mpg for the last 2400 miles.

Date            miles   gal     mpg           notes
4/29/2012	212.7	5.199	40.91171379	home to reno	reno
4/29/2012	328.1	5.823	56.34552636	reno to ely	ely
4/30/2012	428.8	8.448	50.75757576	Ely to moab	Moab
5/1/2012	335.3	6.576	50.98844282	Moab to Chaco to Farmington	Farmington
5/16/2012	499.9	9.996	50.010004	Chaco local	Albuquerque
5/23/2012	388.8	8.184	47.50733138	Chaco local	Cuba
5/25/2012	242.8	4.321	56.1906966	To ABQ& back	Cuba
Totals			0		
         	2436.4	48.547	50.18641729