Goodbye DPF and soot?

Groover wrote:
"CO and CO2 on the other hand(which gassers mainly emit) do stay in the air regardless of where you are at."

Shiner, you generally put a lot of thought and intelligence in your posts. Surely you are not claiming that the carbon in diesel fuel is somehow converted into NOx instead of CO and CO2. And, since diesel has a higher percentage of carbon in it that gasoline a pound of diesel will make more carbon byproducts than a pound of gasoline.

Production of NOx is an endothermic process which means that it absorbs energy and increases demand for carbon based fuel. Once it is discharged it starts breaking down and creates nitric acid which slowly dissolves most everything.


"Trust me, the EPA is not perfect, but some seem to take what they say as the word of God without question or even knowing what the regulation is."

I wholeheartedly agree with this. In fact, they probably did more harm than good with the regulations in the 1970's that made many cars more than double their fuel requirements and thus CO2 emissions.

No, I am not claiming that the carbon in diesel is converted to NOx. That is ludicrous. What I am saying is that diesel emit less CO and CO2 than gassers due to their efficiency. Diesel fuel does have more carbon than a gallon of gas, but due to how efficient a diesel is at utilizing that gallon it emits less carbon per mile.

A prime example of this is the BMW 328d and 328i. Both are exaclty the same except the 328d has a 2.0L diesel engine and the 328i has 2.0L gas engine. The 328d is EPA rated at 31/36/43 mpg combined and has a CO2 output of 68.75 g/m while the 328i is rated at 23/27/34 mpg and has a CO2 output of 77.5 g/m. Keep in mind that our EPA test cycles are geared toward achieving the best results for a gas engine so the the 328d is likely to achieve better fuel economy than the EPA numbers which in turn would lower CO2 output in the real world for the diesel while increasing it for the gasser. In fact, I can attest that it does since I own one and generally achieve 43 mpg combined when it was stock where the EPA rates it at 36 combined.

I am also not saying that the EPA has not done any good or had good intentions especially when it was first created by Republican President Richard Nixon. However, with most government agencies that were started with good intentions, they eventually turn partisan and used by an elected official to implement their agenda. As I said before, I am all for the EPA or any other agency making thought out and calculated decisions using objective data, but I am against them making decisions purely based on a political agenda without looking at the effects of said decisions as a whole.

Many times they just make a decisions and do not calculate the total impact of that decision. One prime example was the CAFE footprint regulation that killed fuel efficient compact truck such as the Ranger and S10. Another is what I previously stated where they lowered the NOx from 1.2 g/hp-hr to .2 g/hp-hr(considerably lower than EU), and by doing so probably created more pollution by what it took for the market to get it there. The EPA does not look in retrospect on whether their decisions actually created more pollution because of how the market reacted o that decisions.

They basically tell the manufacturers that they have to meet a certain number in five years and do not look at the added pollution that it took to get there years later. All they care about is meeting that number. They don't look at the decreases fuel efficiency, adds more pollution from all the plants making DEF and plastic jugs, added garbage pollution from the plastic jugs, added pollution from transporting DEF and so on. As long as the manufacturers attain that 1 g/hp-hr, that is all that matters to them.