Dan Gannon's Diesel Lies: a UseNet Response
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[UseNet headers deleted]
Over the weekend I looked up one of the references cited in the recent
Gannon net-wide post:
From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 5, Number 1 (Spring 1984):
The Diesel Gas Chambers:
Myth Within A Myth
FRIEDRICH PAUL BERG
(Paper presented to the 1983 International Revisionist Conference)
Specifically the following reference
"20. Elliot and Davis, "Composition of Diesel Exhaust Gas," SAE
Quarterly Transactions Vol. 4, No. 3 (July 1950), pp. 345-46 --
discussion by E.W. Landen. [and] 21. Ibid, p. 333."
Now, interestingly enough, the only uses of this reference in the entire
"article" are as follows:
[Two graphs captioned, "Figure 4: Liquid and solid components of
Diesel smoke.^20" (For the graphs, see image file FIGURE4.GIF, or
see the source cited in footnote 20 at the end of this article.)]
and
[Graph captioned, "Figure 5: Carbon monoxide emissions from
undivided chamber Diesel engines.^21 The heavy vertical line at a
fuel:air ratio of 0.055 has been added by the author." (For the
graph, see image file FIGURE5.GIF, or see the source cited in
footnote 21 at the end of this article.)]
After looking at the reference in question it is unclear to me just what
graphs this is supposed to refer to in the original article as there are
four different figures on page 333. I did find some very interesting
material in the article but probably not what the deniers had in mind.
Berg would have us believe that a diesel engine that produces any free
carbon is in some sort of critical danger of destroying itself. He suggests
as much in the following paragraph:
Diesel smoke contains a liquid phase and a solid phase. The
liquid phase generally gets blown out of the engine with the
exhaust and, therefore, does no harm to the engine. But if enough
solid material is also produced, and rapidly enough, some of that
material will accumulate in the cylinders where in just a few
minutes it can severely damage the piston rings and valves and
cause the engine to simply self-destruct and stop. As the graph
shows, the amount of solids produced by the engines increases
dramatically just beyond a fuel/air ratio of 0.055. For this
reason, manufacturers as a rule equip the fuel injection pumps
with stops so that the engines can only operate below 0.055 or
0.050.
Anyone who has seen an old diesel car on the road belching smoke from its
exhaust knows that even in this condition such cars can go on for years.
Let's put this bit of nonsense aside and just accept it as a fact for the
sake of argument. Berg then arbitrarily places a limit on the fuel-air
ratio of 0.055 as the "safe" operating limit for diesel engines, lest they
self destruct. It is true that if enough solid exhaust material (i.e. free
carbon) is produced fast enough that damage to the engine can result. What
Berg doesn't say is what constitutes enough or fast enough. In figure 6 of
the original reference we see that at a fuel-air ratio of 0.055 the
unburned carbon makes up 0.0001% of the exhaust by volume. This volume is
substantially the same from a fuel-air ratio of approx. 0.01 up to 0.055.
Why then the cutoff at the fuel-air ratio of 0.055 for "safe operation"? It
certainly isn't clear from Berg's article why he considers this the cut-off
point and the original reference makes no mention of any of the diesel
engines they tested (up to fuel-air ratios of 0.09) self-destructing.
What Berg does not mention is that in figure 6 of the original reference
the percent by volume of free carbon in the exhaust only reaches 0.0002% at
a fuel-air ratio of approximately 0.065. So if 0.0001% is perfectly safe
then it might be reasonable to assume 0.0002% could only reduce the
operating life of the engine by some finite amount. Certainly an engine
running with 0.0002% free carbon in its exhuast could run many hours
without breaking down and, I would argue, with proper maintenance could
last for years.
O.K., Berg would still have us believe that this is well below the fuel-air
ratio at which a diesel engine can produce his (Berg's) requirement of 0.8%
CO (by volume) in the exhaust to kill in half an hour. Figure 3 on page 333
of the original reference might tend to bear out this contention, showing
as it does that neither a 44 Bhp (british horse power) diesel or a 70 Bhp
diesel can produce much more than about 0.2% CO at a fuel-air ratio of
0.065. These are conservative estimates from the graph in Figure 3.
However, if we move our eyes down and to the left on page 333 we see
another graph, Figure 4. Figure 4 is a graph of the CO output of a 150 Bhp
diesel engine with respect to fuel-air ratio. In it, it is obvious that at
a fuel-air ratio 0.065 the 150 Bhp engine produces _over_ 1.0% CO by
volume. You read that correctly, 1.0%! Deadly even by Berg's standards.
Even at the "magical" fuel-air ratio of 0.055 the 150 Bhp diesel is
producing around 0.4% CO, also generally considered quite deadly.
Could this mean that larger diesel engines produce deadlier fumes? There
really isn't enough data to extrapolate to the size engines used at
Treblinka but the trend toward increasing CO emissions with an increase in
engine power output is certainly clear in the 44Bhp to 150 Bhp range. I
don't see how an even larger engine would be safer than the 150Bhp tested
but perhaps Gannon can enlighten us.
I repost the following essay for the benefit of those who missed
it the first time, and for certain Holocaustomaniacs who need to
LEARN HOW TO READ ACCURATELY AND STOP LYING.
Perhaps Berg should learn how to thoroughly read his references, eh?
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@teleport.com Public Access User --- Not affiliated with
TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400,
N81)
-- Scott smullins@ecn.purdue.edu
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