What Price Clean Air?
Dean Ragone of ThayerSchool, adviser to the federal government on fuelsand engines, discusses theprospects for reducing automobile pollution.
With the characteristic optimism of the good engineer, to whom the giant-sized problem translates merely into a giant-sized challenge, Dean David V. Ragone of artmouth's Thayer School of Engineering is convinced that air pollution from automobiles can be licked.
But, in his view, it will not be easy, if we're not to come up with cures nearly as fatal as the disease. He should know. Since shortly after the federal government became formally concerned with the problem, he has been in the middle of efforts to reverse the hazardous trend toward an environment poisoned by cars.
As a recognized authority on automotive power plants, he was appointed to the Panel on Electrically Powered Vehicles established in 1967 under the joint sponsorship of several federal departments and agencies to look into alternatives to internal combustion engines. A fellow panelist then was Myron Tribus, Dean Ragone's predecessor at Thayer School who later was named Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology, and is now executive vice president of Xerox.
The panel determined that at least for the immediate future of five to ten years the internal combustion engine would continue to offer the only feasible power plant for mass personal transportation, and it therefore turned to the study of that engine.
After producing the first definitive report on the scope and cause of air pollution by present gasoline-powered cars, that panel was disbanded, to be replaced in 1970 by a Panel on Automotive Fuels and Air Pollution set UP by the Department of Commerce Technical Advisory Board to continue investigations into the nature of the air pollution problem and to initiate policy recommendations for the government. Again, Dean Ragone, then Professor of -Metallurgy and Material Science at Carnegie-Mellon University, was tapped to be chairman of the nine-man expert Panel. Significantly, in light of the government's concern for selecting the most authoritative people available, the panel has a strong Dartmouth coloration. In addition to Dean Ragone, the nine members include Frederick J. Hooven, Adjunct Professor of Engineering at Thayer School and an inventor who holds dozens of automotive patents.
The problem they attacked presents not only a serious threat to the ecological equilibrium of this planet, if not brought under control, but also a classic illustration of the profound impact of technology on the society of man in this century.
Less than 100 years ago, in 1875, a German named Marcus succeeded in operating the first experimental internal combustion engine. It took another ten years before another German, Karl Benz, built a car powered by an internal combustion engine deemed worth pat- enting and producing. Not until 1892, in Springfield, Mass., did an American, Charles E. Duryea, make a gasoline-powered automobile run successfully.
But since that day only 79 years ago, the use of the private automobile for personal transport has become what one writer has described as "one of the distinguishing hallmarks of this nation's culture."
In the life span of persons still living, America has seen the "horseless carriage" bound from a curiosity cursed for frightening horses to a necessity. An estimated 100 million cars are in use in this country alone today, with more being produced at a rate of about 10 million a year. With their cars, Americans last year traveled an estimated 1,165 billion miles, or more than twelve times the distance to the sun, and consumed in the process an estimated 100 billion gallons of gasoline. In becoming the most mobile people on earth, Americans have created a multibillion-dollar industry employing several million persons. It is the industry around which the national economy virtually pivots.
From an ecological point of view, this incredible growth has had a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde quality. When Dean Ragone first looked at the problem, for instance, evidence showed that in 1966 motor vehicles accounted for 60.6 per cent of the 142 million tons of pollution entering the air in that year.
That was the size of the threat that led his panel to conclude in 1967 that "air pollution presents a serious threat of increasing significance to the health and welfare of this country and all industrialized areas of the world. Without prompt and effective action to control this contamination of the atmosphere, living conditions within and around the cities of the nation will continue to deteriorate. Automotive vehicle emissions, namely carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, and lead compounds are a principal contributor to this problem."
As a reminder that clean air is a precious natural resource requiring protection, Dean Ragone recalled a statistic from his 1967 report pointing out that while man's daily consumption of food and water totals approximately seven pounds, he requires about 30 pounds of air each day to survive.
Even before those somber conclusions were written, the automotive industry had taken steps to reduce sharply pollution from one source. That was crankcase "blowby," unburned gases escaping from the engine cylinders through the crankcase into the atmosphere and accounting for 25 per cent of the hydrocarbon pollution produced by cars. This has largely been eliminated from new cars by various techniques involving recycling the escaping gases back into the engine for burning, a procedure commonly known as "positive crankcase ventilation." Similarly, according to Dean Ragone, a further substantial reduction in emissions of hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide has been achieved in the 1971 automobile models by equipment improvement of the exhaust system. Also, equipment has been developed to control evaporation of hydrocarbons from carburetors, fuel lines and gas tanks, which had accounted for some 15 to 20 per cent of hydrocarbon pollution. These improvements on new cars are starting to stem part of the tide, Dean Ragone said, but warned that it would still take time to reach maximum impact since the active life cycle of cars today is about ten years and the polluting power of cars increases as they get older.
Yet, Dean Ragone points out, much more remains to be done in the highly complex area of bringing exhaust emissions—carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, lead carbons, and hydrocar-bons—down to acceptable standards set for 1975.
Part of the problem is mechanical. The very high efficiency engine, which would help reduce escaping carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon by burning more of them off, actually creates the condition of intense heat that increases the production of oxides of nitrogen, produced in nature by lightning.
Yet, it has been deemed essential to cut the emissions of nitrogen oxides to one-tenth of their present rate because nitrogen oxides are a central actor in the awesome phenomenon of smog, a depressing, irritating urban blight even fatal to some. Smog is produced by a photochemical reaction when nitrogen oxides join in what Dean Ragone calls "an unholy alliance" with hydrocarbons in the presence of sunlight. The critical role of the sun in converting these chemicals into layers of dirty, choking clouds accounts for the smog that has afflicted such seemingly unlikely, but sunny, cities as Denver and Phoenix.
Nitrogen-oxide pollution can be reduced by lowering the combustion temperature, through recirculation of exhaust gases into the intake of the engine, and perhaps in the future by means of catalytic devices now being developed. Although Dean Ragone reports that developments are coming fast in the whole area of catalytic emission control devices, the problem remains to find a catalyst that is effective in eliminating hydrocarbons and reducing nitrogen oxides and yet will not break down in the presence of lead.
Leaded gasoline also creates pollution problems on another count. In the air and breathed in any amount, lead, it is feared, could produce a cumulative toxic effect which would not be detected until too late for possibly large segments of the population.
Thus, on two grounds, the campaign for clean air requires the removal of lead from fuel or its sharp reduction, but not without cost.
As Dean Ragone observed, while firing off words and ideas like machine, gun bullets, "There's no such thing as a free lunch," borrowing from the title of a book on the economics of environmental control by Edwin G. Dolan of the Dartmouth economics department
High compression in automotive engines permits the increased power and improved fuel mileage of most modern engines, Dean Ragone's Panel on Automotive Fuels and Air Pollution pointed out in its report to James H. Wakelin Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology chairman of the Commerce Technical Advisory Board and, coincidentally. also a Dartmouth graduate, Class of 1932. But the compression ratio of an engine is limited by knock, described in the reports as "the uncontrolled and explosive combustion of the fuel-air charge in engine cylinders which results in severe power loss, possible engine damage, and increased nitrogen oxide emission."
It was further explained that a measure of a fuel's resistance to knock is its octane number; and lead was originally introduced to gasoline because it had proven the most efficient and least expensive additive to increase its octane rating.
Now facing the necessity of removing all or most lead from gasoline if cars are to use catalysts meeting emissions standards set for 1975 by the stringent Clean Air Amendment of 1970, the refineries confront the dilemma of whether to produce high-octane gas by replacing lead with high concentrations of other blending components, or to produce lowered octane gas with no or low lead content.
In either case, there are costs. Because it would take many years to build the equipment and plant to produce the different high-octane components, in addition to imposing high investment costs, that course is not viewed as a practical alternative, particularly in view of time constraints.
On the other hand, cars tuned to run on lowered octane ratings will burn an estimated 10 to 15 per cent more fuel—what Dean Ragone calls a "fuel economy penalty"—after lead content is reduced to meet the 1975 standards.
Dean Ragone's panel estimated in its report issued in March that a 10 per cent increase in fuel consumption would produce an increased annual cost of more than $30 per motorist. "More significantly," the panel noted, "increases in fuel consumption would require substantial expansion in petroleum refinery capacity," in order to produce the nine billion extra gallons of fuel need annually—at an added annual cost to the public of over $3 billion. To underscore the complexity of the issue, Dean Ragone pointed out that this projected surge in gasoline consumption even had foreign policy ramifications if it were decided that, in the interest of conserving a national natural resource, the crude oil should be purchased from foreign suppliers.
For these reasons and others, the panel recommended to the government that it immediately set additive and octane standards to enable both the automotive and refinery industries to tool and prepare for the changes required by current Clean Air legislation.
Dean Ragone stressed that the problem was acute for both industries, since the oil industry would need at least a two-year lead time to complete the additional refinery capacity and make necessary changeovers for the production of adequate amounts of lower octane fuel.
Similarly, he said, the production of automobiles today—with the essential stress on safety and reliability and the testing time required to build that element into cars—involves a five-year lead time. Even compressing this time factor, the 1975 models scheduled to come off the assembly line late in 1974 are already well into the design stage.
Another economic factor is the cost of the necessary emission control devices, which, it is estimated, will add from $100 to $300 to the price of the modern car.
Dean Ragone said he cited these several difficulties and complexities not to defend any interest. The need for emission control in the multitude of cars thronging the nation's highways is indisputable, he insists, in the interest not only of posterity but of the population now living. He is proud that the committees of which he has been a part have been able to set in motion controls that will reverse air contamination and hopefully assure future generations a birthright of clean air.
But then he pointed to the fact that the Clean Air Amendment of 1970 had literally halved the time schedule originally proposed for an orderly approach to washing the atmosphere of contamination. What had been the goals for 1980 became the legal limits for engine emission by 1975—or 1976, if a one-year extension were requested and granted to honor efforts considered to have been undertaken "in good faith."
"My concern," he said, "is that in our earnest effort to remove a peril we may try to do too much too fast. Let me cite two reasons.
"First, I am concerned about a public backlash if, when the bill falls due, "it proves so high that it turns off popular enthusiasm for cleaning up our air. This would be the ultimate tragedy, because we cannot succeed in this mission without public understanding and support; but neither can we afford a lapse in an orderly program toward decontamination.
"Secondly, I am concerned that we have not had a chance really to think through the impact of all the rules and regulations we are making. We are involved here in matters so complex that without studies in depth—in effect, a systems approach to the problem—we cannot possibly envision the technological, let alone the even more tenuous but critical economic, social and political consequences of what we are proposing."
In this context, Dean Ragone, shifting from his role of expert consultant to that of educator, saw in this dilemma an important part for universities, and particularly students, to play.
"Universities and their students could be an important source of credible investigation because they bring to the situation no partisan concerns but that of humanity," he said. "Particularly at a place like Dartmouth—where we have a strong computer capability and the potential for close interaction among the disciplines of engineering, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities—students and faculty could contribute importantly by playing out the scenario of trends in technology and public policy, testing the potential long-range results of our actions."
Pointing out that one of his tutorial students, Tim Schad of Grand Rapids, Mich., who will receive his B.E. in June, had combined his engineering and computing skills to prepare all the charts and graphs for the 1971 report on "Automotive Fuels and Air Pollution," Dean Ragone enthused: "These ecological concerns call on a new kind of engineering approach, combining both broad-gauged technological skills, including knowledge of computing, with equally broad literacy in the social and political sciences and the humanities. In the light of these needs, we at Dartmouth have a real chance to lead the way in developing something the nation needs. And we're already programming our curriculum to make it happen. We're small; we can interact. We can make a difference, and that is one of the reasons why being here is exciting."
Dean David Ragone of Thayer School, chairman of the Panel on Automotive Fuelsand Air Pollution for the U.S. Commerce Department's Technical Advisory Boardhas also been named chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Automotive Power Systems under the President's Council on Environmental Quality.
As part of Environmental Awareness Day sponsored by the Dartmouth OutingClub, an Auto Exhaust Clinic was conducted in front of Robinson Hall on May 1.Several hundred cars were tested and most had high carbon monoxide emission rates.
