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Let's see.. a gauge to tell you how fast you're going, a gauge to show you how much fuel you have left and a gauge to monitor how much damage you're doing to the environment. According to Gizmag, a team from The University of Manchester has developed a laser device that measures greenhouse gas emissions inside the car's exhaust system before it's loosed on the world. The eggheads' hope: if you see how much nasty stuff you're producing you'll adjust your driving style accordingly. Of course, if you don't, "this technology could also be used in roadside congestion charging systems, with less polluting vehicles being charged less." Yes, The University of Manchester is in England.
9 Comments on “On-the-fly Emissions Monitoring for Big Brother and… You!...”
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It seems reasonable that if you want to reduce air pollution inside your city, you bill people on how much pollution they emit within your city.
I just pray in vain that these folks will not consider carbon dioxide as a pollutant. I wonder if the same devise will be used on potential hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to monitor the levels of dihydrogen monoxide (naturally occurring chemical like Co2, but over twice as strong of a greenhouse gas) emitted into our precious atmosphere.
As someone with a bit of background in this area (degrees in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and organic chemistry), I think they’re being a bit optimistic if they think this is going to somehow change driving habits.
First off, cars that burn petroleum products are going to produce greenhouse gases – in fact, assuming perfect combustion that’s pretty much all they make (both CO2 and water vapor are greenhouse gases, plus the nitrogen that was in the air anyway). So, if your car is running properly the amount of greenhouse gas you produce is proportional to the amount of fuel you use. My point being, if people aren’t changing their driving habits due to their fuel usage I don’t think they’ll change it because of another gauge in the dash. Plus, those little digital fuel use meters (or even a vacuum gauge) are about 1000x cheaper than this system and basically tell you the same thing.
If they’re going to install a bunch of these to try to charge fees to the vehicles that pollute more, it seems to make more sense to get that money through gasoline taxes. Plus, how would any roadside system handle the different heights of vehicle exhausts (including stacks on OTR and delivery trucks), plus single vs. dual exhausts, plus weather conditions (strong winds, for instance)? Is there going to have to be a person at each location, physically pointing the device towards each vehicle as it drives by?
In addition, they can’t use the system the way they use smog checks in the US because it’s not sensitive enough to pick up the full assortment of combustion byproducts.
In the end it’s an interesting class project for a bunch of engineering students, but has little practical application in the real world. The only potential use I can see is to get real-time feedback while tuning vehicles, but I believe there are already systems out there that do a better job.
I think the average person on the street doesn’t realize that greenhouse gases (and CO2 in particular) are a natural byproduct of combustion and aren’t something you’re going to “filter out” somehow. Yeah, you could sequester them, but that’s simply not a realistic solution when we’re talking about vehicles. When it comes to cars that use internal combustion, you *want* carbon dioxide to be coming out of your exhaust – it’s a good thing (far better than the alternatives), and the only way to make less of it is to simply burn less fuel.
What LK said.
I give people a little more credit, though. I think the average person does realize that GHGs are a natural combustion byproduct.
N85523: >>I just pray in vain that these folks will not consider carbon dioxide as a pollutant. I wonder if the same devise will be used on potential hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to monitor the levels of dihydrogen monoxide (naturally occurring chemical like Co2, but over twice as strong of a greenhouse gas) emitted into our precious atmosphere.
I have inquired about this. Between the fact that the water H fuel cell cars emit would likely have started out as water, and the fact that internal combustion produces water along with the CO2, we would be better off with H fuel cell cars than internal combustion.
David,
I see your point, but still not sure I agree with you entirely. If we use water as a “fuel” to produce hydrogen, it’ll most likely be liquid water, not atmospheric. That water would essentially be displaced as vapor into the atmosphere unnaturally. I’m trying to follow the logic of the human-induced global warming types. It just seems like the wrong direction by their logic. I don’t know really, hell I work in the coal industry, so I must be the enemy to those folks. I also don’t think economics will ever be able to justify hydrogen as a “fuel.” Takes too much energy to produce than it yields when burning…
dean: You have more faith in the average person than I do.
A little story:
A couple of months back, one of our office assistants came up to me with a yardstick, and asked me which side was in inches and which side was metric. Both sides were in inches, so not only was she incapable of telling that both sides were the same, she also couldn’t recognize an inch (or a centimeter) when she saw one. The same woman also asked me how many times the president could be re-elected, and told me that she was pretty sure Las Vegas was in the Midwest (she used to live in Texas, and thought Vegas was east of Texas). This woman graduated in the top half of her class, and is currently going to college…so if she represents the average person on the street, I’d be surprised if they didn’t think that greenhouse gases were somehow emitted by greenhouses.
N85523 & David:
In many cases the water emitted by Hydrogen fuel cells comes from other hydrocarbons. Since you’re splitting off the H that leaves you with C & O. Not to mention that so much of the electricity used to split said molecules comes from hydrocarbon fuels to begin with. Seems the worst of both worlds to me.
LK:
Greenhouse gases are emitted by greenhouses. Particularly at night.
MaxHedrm: FYI, I was making a joke – I think you’re taking things a bit too seriously.