There are those who grab the bottles of AdBlue in whole packs, as if they were the bundles of six bottles of sparkling water. There are those who look for Adblue from one service area to another, without ever turning off the engine for fear of not being able to restart it. Wholesale stores and DIY and do-it-yourself chains are emptied as quickly as smooth feathers dissolved off the shelves of pandemic hoarders a year and a half ago. Problem number one, with the increasingly expensive (and increasingly rare) methane it is not possible to produce enough AdBlue, the additive that cuts the nitrogen emissions of Euro6 diesel engines.
The cost of manufacturing has become higher than the cost of selling.
And when the small tank of additive is emptied on vehicles, the engine stops running. It does not turn on again as long as the reservoir remains dry.
In the new generation diesel engines, an indicator marks the imminent exhaustion of the antismog compound. When the small tank is empty, the engine continues to run until the first shutdown and from that moment the ignition control unit does not let the engine restart until the liquid is topped up, except in cases of highly polluting expedients adopted in an emergency by some boarding truck driver and some repairman skilled more in handling than in mechanics.
The alarm of truckers: Fai Conftrasporto
The associations of truckers and transporters are alarmed.
“We are experiencing a crazy increase in management costs and operating costs and this affects above all those who have new and very efficient vehicles”, notes Andrea Manfron, general secretary of the Make Conftrasporto. «Anyone who has invested with new vehicles powered by liquefied methane, LNG, is subject to refueling prices that are 2.5 times higher than in the spring. And now we add the blow of AdBlue shortage for new generation diesels ».
Comments also from TrasportiUnito (where green passes, construction sites and price increases fail, “the goal of blocking road transport will be achieved by Adblue”) and by a Forza Italia parliamentarian, Dario Bond (“The risk is that a truck can stop even during a journey if the relative tank is not topped up “).
Production in Europe slows down (and sometimes stops)
AdBlue is the trade name of a urea and water solution which in new generation diesel engines is used to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, the pollutant that characterizes diesel. The raw materials for producing ammonia and its urea derivative are nitrogen, extracted by distilling the air, and hydrogen extracted from methane.
Urea and other nitrogen compounds are also the most widely used fertilizers.
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