Search goes on for a clean car

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32406, 19 September 1970, Page 11

Search goes on for a clean car

There are some 90 million automobiles in the United States, and with few exceptions they run on internal combustion engines fuelled by gasoline.

They are the largest single cause of air pollution. For that reason, among student engineers and Government and even some industry researchers there is a move to see if the exceptions could become the rule.

Efforts to clean up the internal combustion engine or to find an acceptable substitute for it were dramatised by the cross-country cleanair car race in which students from 30 universities and three high schools entered 45 experimental automobiles, some of wMch the students built from the ground up, The object was to drive the 3600 miles from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Pasadena, California, in seven days—although the cars were racing not for speed but to see which could produce the least air and noise pollution. Some of the more unconventional entries—steam, allelectric and electric-hybrid cars—were not expected to cross the finish line in time. But two-thirds of the entries, all making good time, were modified, low-pollution versions of the internal combustion engine. Its continuing popularity stemmed in large part from the race’s overriding objective—which was to demonstrate engines that could make a significant contribution to cleaning up the atmosphere in the next decade.

Another objective, according to student race co-ordi-nators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was to encourage universities and engineering students to devote more independent research effort on the automobile, an engineering field that had been largely left up to industry. Earlier last month, President Nixon’s Council on Environmental Quality reported to Congress recommendations for a larger Federal research programme to hasten the development of unconventional auto propulsion systems. The National Air Pollution Control Administration supported the students’ race with $220,000 to document the engineering data and with a promise to use some of the best experimental cars for further test-

ing. Exhausts from the present internal combustion engines are responsible for three-fourths of the carbon monoxide that is discharged into the air of the United States each year. They are

responsible for more than half the hydocarbons (unburned fuel) emissions and nearly half the nitrogen oxides. Moreover, they are the chief source of lead in the atmosphere. Such pollution in the air not only causes the eyewatering smog that clouds all urban life, but contributes to emphysema, bronchitis and other respiratory ailments and has been linked to higher mortality rates from cancer and heart disease.

All of the suggested engineering solutions, even the most modest ones, would probably raise the price of automobiles by several hundred dollars.

One way of reducing exhaust emissions from internal combustion as d monstrated by the student engineers is to change fuels. Several of the entries had engines modified for liquid natural gas and liquid propane gas, which burn more efficiently than gasoline and therefore have fewer toxic residues. One technical problem is that the nation’s supply of natural gas may be too limited for its widespread use in automobiles. Other student engineers stuck with gasoline—usually unleaded—but fitted the engines with varying combinations of purifiers, special carburettors and exhaust-gas recirculators. The cars were plagued from the start with low speeds, and the all-electric cars could not make good time because they % had to stop for an hour every 60 to 80 miles to recharge their batteries.

All the cars in the race had to meet or exceed the emission standards set recently by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for all 1975 cars. By these standards a car engine will not be permitted to emit more than 11 grams of carbon monoxide, 0.5 grams of hydrocarbons and 0.9 grams of nitrogen oxides a mile. Most cars on the road today exceed these limits by 100 per cent Copyright “New York Times” news service.