Smog
Recently, California legislated that only electric vehicles will be sold in the state starting in 2035, only 12 years away. Likely other coastal states who typically follow California regarding vehicle emission standards will rule similarly, with the state of Washington already having done so. Midwest states like Ohio will likely not follow the same path. These regulations dramatically pull ahead existing plans by the auto industry for 100% EV’s. This action continues the pattern for decades of California being aggressive at addressing vehicular emission.
The trend started in 1943, when Los Angeles experienced severe smog during WWII when industrial production was ramping up to produce war materials. The word “smog” was coined at the time as a contraction of “smoke” and “fog”, a dangerous combination that has proven harmful to human health. The Los Angeles basin is especially susceptive to the formation of smog because of low winds, lots of sunshine, little rain, high population density and being surrounded by mountains, all contributing to contain and increase the smog over the city. Government officials at the time wrongly concluded that pollution primarily originated from industrial and electrical generating plants, since the dark soot was visually belching from factory smokestacks.
After the war, California’s initial legislation to address the smog problem focused on cleaning industrial sources of pollution. A Cottrell precipitator was the predominant technology used within the smokestack. Fine particles in a a flowing industrial waste gas are filtered by the use an induced electrostatic charge where dust and smoke are attracted towards the positively charged wire electrode. Back in 1965, my high school science fair project was a mini-Cottrell precipitator to clean cigarette smoke. It worked and I got an A from Mr. Tenney, our chemistry teacher. Plus, we could take a few drags on the cigarette while in school without being disciplined.
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| Cottrell Precipitator Science Project |
However, cleaning the smokestacks didn’t clear the smog in LA. An event in the fall of 1949 that occurred hundreds of miles north of L.A., at a Cal Berkley-vs-Washington State football game offered some fairly convincing “cause-and-effect” clues as to the root cause of the pollution. On the day of the game, thousands of fans drove into Berkeley with resulting traffic congestion. Later, during the game, after the “soup” (another nickname for smog) had formed over and around the stadium, the pollution became so bad that “many thousands of persons attending . . . experienced intense eye irritation.” The California General Assembly, investigated the incident, noting that the only unusual occurrence that day “was the concentration of automobiles at the football game in Berkeley, accentuated by the idling of motors, starting and stopping, which occurs in such a traffic jam.” There was no other industrial or other source in the area. It could only be concluded, the committee said, “that the cause of this particular eye irritation was in some way directly related to automobile exhaust.” Although there was little hard science to verify their hunch, the committee concluded that vehicle exhaust from the 2 million cars in LA with internal combustion engines was certainly contributing to the pollution problem.
The hard science eventually evolved when California Institute of Technology professor Dr. Arie Haagen-Smit proved that unburned hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, coming primarily from automobile exhaust and some industrial sources, were “cooked” by sunlight in a photochemical reaction to form ground-level ozone, later revealed as a respiratory and eye irritant.
So in the early 1950’s, the state approached the auto industry to develop cleaner vehicles. A consortium was formed with all the auto companies where they agreed to share research on emissions technology to develop cleaner vehicles. However, the effort was like “herding cats” according to one California official. The competitive auto companies basically decided they would simply allow the other companies to spend money on the research, then just copy the solution once divulged. But all reacted in the same manner, so nothing was accomplished meaning the smog in LA persisted. I can recall one such trip to California in the early 70’s when visiting a fraternity brother who was going to grad school at the USC and literally choking on the smog. A professor of his, knowing we both worked for the auto industry, my frat brother for GM and me for Ford, invited us on his sail boat to demonstrate first hand how the smog hangs over the city when viewed from offshore in the Pacific Ocean. He failed in his mission because I got violently sea sick on the sailboat and we had to return to shore!
After more than a decade of no action by the auto industry, by 1965, under the leadership of then-governor Ronald Reagan, the state established the California Air Resources Board to regulate vehicular emissions, setting tighter and tighter standards that the auto companies were challenged to implement, because California represented about 15% of their market and could not be abandoned. The state also initiated a lawsuit against the auto companies for the consortium’s delaying tactics over a 10 year period, specifically because catalytic converter technology existed that could have solved the smog problem in LA but was never pursued. The lawsuit was eventually settled with a consent agreement that the car companies would add catalytic converters to all cars sold in California starting with the 1974 model year. The catalytic converter creates a chemical reaction in the exhaust flow to transform the carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide being emitted from internal combustion engines to carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water.
Having worked in the auto industry for over 30 years, including a number of years experience in Ford's powertrain controls area, it was a constant challenge to meet the stringent vehicle emission standards established by California. But the mission was accomplished as car emissions have improved 1000 times since the 1970’s and the smog in LA is history.
However, the carbon dioxide formed by the catalytic converter is now deemed to be contributing to the accumulation of greenhouse gases leading to dramatic climate change. So California again took the recent aggressive action to ban internal combustion engines entirely by dictating only electric or hydrogen powered vehicles be sold after 2035. Concurrently, they also legislated that all fossil-fueled electrical power plants be phased out; using instead renewable solar and wind power to generate the needed electricity for charging electric vehicles. With another round of technical challenges facing the auto industry, if only I was 50 years younger, as I’d relish starting all over again to help meet these new challenges.
Click on this link for my past blog about electrical vehicles and this website for more info on the history of LA’s smog and how it was eliminated.
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