Have
you seen or used ‘Krishnoil’ (there is no divinity attached to it !) ~ though
not All India Motor Tariff parameter, some Insurers do distinguish between
petrol and diesel versions of the same make model vehicle !!
Volkswagen was in
news for wrong – as it is alleged to have been cheating in emission tests by making
its cars appear far less polluting than they are. The US Environmental
Protection Agency discovered that 482,000 VW diesel cars on American roads were
emitting up to 40 times more toxic fumes than permitted - and VW has since
admitted the cheat affects 11m cars worldwide.
In case
you are baffled ‘krishnoil’ was a household name of 1970s – it is the ‘kerosene
oil’ – which according to a study by researchers from UC Berkeley and the
University of Illinois – the Globe has been overlooking a significant source of black
carbon pollution: Kerosene lanterns, used as a primary light source for
millions of people worldwide.
Kerosene, also
known as paraffin, lamp oil, and coal oil (an obsolete term), is a combustible
hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum, widely used as a fuel in
industry as well as households. Its name derives from Greek: κηρός (keros)
meaning wax, and was registered as a trademark by Canadian geologist and
inventor Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a genericized trademark. Kerosene is widely used to power jet engines
of aircraft (jet fuel) and some rocket engines and is also commonly used as a
cooking and lighting fuel and for fire toys such as poi. I have heard of
roadside mechanics using kerosene to power their two wheelers !! The research claims that the black carbon soot from kerosene lanterns
is twenty times higher than is currently assumed when factoring in this light
source into calculations of total black carbon emissions. Black carbon is increasingly being cited as a
significant factor in global warming, as well as in glacier melting. So Scientists would
want to poor to phase out kerosene stoves and look for a costlier alternative !
The diesel engine, named
after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the
fuel which is injected into the combustion chamber is caused by the elevated
temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression. This contrasts with spark-ignition engines
such as a petrol engine that uses a
spark plug to ignite an air-fuel mixture. The diesel engine has the highest
thermal efficiency (engine efficiency) of any practical internal or external
combustion engine due to its very high expansion ratio and inherent lean burn
which enables heat dissipation by the excess air. Diesel engines may be
designed as either two-stroke or four-stroke cycles. Since the 1910s they have
been used in submarines and ships. Use in locomotives, trucks, heavy equipment
and electricity generation plants followed later. Since the 1970s, the use of diesel engines in
larger on-road and off-road vehicles in the US increased. Production diesel car history started in 1933 with Citroën's Rosalie, which featured a
diesel engine option; Mercedes-Benz 260D and the Hanomag Rekord were introduced
in 1936. The biggest single step forward
for mass-market diesel cars came in 1982 when PSA Peugeot Citroën introduced
the XUD engine in the Peugeot ~ and this
type of cars started the diesel boom in Europe spreading to
other continents as well.
Now comes
the news that – one of Germany’s top
courts has ruled that heavily polluting vehicles can be banned from the urban
centres of Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, a landmark ruling that could dramatically
hit the value of diesel cars. Environmental campaigners had sued dozens of
German cities, arguing they have a duty to cut air pollution to protect
people’s health.
The
Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig found that authorities in Stuttgart and
Düsseldorf, two of Germany’s most polluted cities, can now legally ban older,
more polluting vehicles, but the ruling will have an impact on the whole
country, paving the way for other cities to introduce bans. The court did not impose any bans itself,
leaving that up to city and municipal authorities. The judges did however urge
them to “exercise proportionality” and said any curbs should be introduced
gradually and allow for certain exemptions.
About
70 German cities including Munich and Cologne recorded average nitrogen dioxide
levels above EU thresholds in 2017, according to the federal environment agency
(UBA). The car industry has been vocal
about its opposition to a ban, as has the German government, fearing it would
hugely disrupt the lives of diesel car owners, who will not only find
themselves unable to drive their cars but also in possession of vehicles that
will plummet in value.
In a nod
to concerns about the affected cars’ resale values, judge Andreas Korbmacher
said “certain losses will have to be accepted”. Eager
to reassure anxious car owners, the government insisted that nothing would
change right away and stressed that bans were not inevitable. “The court has
not issued any driving bans but created clarity about the law,” said
Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks. “Driving bans can be avoided, and my
goal is and will remain that they do not come into force,” she added. Chancelor
Angela Merkel also weighed in, saying the ruling concerned only “individual
cities”. “It’s really not about the entire country and all car owners,” she
said.
But
the outcome marks a huge victory for the environmentalist group Deutsche
Umwelthilfe (DUH), which sued Stuttgart and Duesseldorf to force them to take
action against the toxic nitrogen oxides and fine particles emitted by older
diesel engines. Concerns over the
harmful effects of diesel have soared since Volkwagen’s “dieselgate” scandal in
2015, in which it manipulated the systems on 11m vehicles worldwide to fool
regulators’ emissions tests.
Industry
giants such as Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler have responded to “dieselgate” by
offering updates to engine control software to reduce emissions, but the
decision in favour of diesel bans could up the pressure on them to provide
hardware fixes to heavily polluting cars. Car companies have already seen the
market share for diesel vehicles in Germany fall from 48% in 2015 to about 39%
last year.
'
With regards
– S. Sampathkumar
27th
Feb 2018.
Pic and
news credit : Guardian.co,uk
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