The UK Clean Air Act & Black Smoke
November 24, 2014
By Paul Homewood
While we’re on the topic of power station smokestacks, it is worth noting that the UK has a Clean Air Act, originally introduced in 1956.
The latest version, the Clean Air Act 1993, contains this provision:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1993/11/section/1
Dark smoke is defined with reference to the Ringelmann Chart, a device designed to measure the apparent density of smoke.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1993/11/section/3#commentary-c1049024
https://lochgelly.org.uk/2012/11/mossmorran-ringelmann/
So, the next time Roger Harrabin sees black smoke coming out of a chimney, perhaps he might care to report it to DEFRA for breaking the law.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The irony is, if the BBC (or anyone else) publishes a photo showing ‘dark’ smoke from a chimney, then it either can’t be a UK chimney, or, it can’t be dark smoke. QED.
You would need more than a photo. Someone would have to go there in person and check the smoke from all sides for what color it is.
That’s a very odd law. Not very scientific, I’d have so say.
I believe the test originated in 1877!!
Sounds like it’s in desperate need of revision to something more 21st century.
Paul, not sure if you are aware of this as a non-twitterer, but Harrabin even uses backlit cooling towers as his twitter icon picture
He’s gone very quiet the last few days, since he falsely described “the fossil fuel lobby group GWPF” and then changed it after a lot of complaints to just “GWPF”.
Bingo!
The trick is to take the photo at dusk so the smoke *appears* to be black but really it’s just a shadow – as in Harebrain’s Twitter photo.
Wattsupwiththat looked at this photo for evidence of photoshopping some time ago, as I remember this photo was making an almost regular appearance in the Guardian at the time. Apparently you create black smoke by adjusting the contrast on a selected area of the steam.
You can do this without photoshop. I used to create such effects using film. It’s a matter of light, aperture, exposure time, angle, etc. Photoshop just makes it easier. (I note this because people will come back with “we saw this before Photoshop” and they did. It was no more representative of reality than the Photoshopped version.)
Also, I have seen a bunch of such photos with orange and black smoke, taken at sunrise or sunset. The claim is the factory is pouring out CO2. There is no way to know if CO2 is coming out. CO2 is odorless, colorless. How could the photographer possibly know there is CO2? It’s an assumption that has nothing to do with what is actually observed.
It isn’t even that white cloud of notorious GHG H20 visibly for long, just till the droplets evaporate.
I bet there’s a lot of hydroxilic acid in that black cloud.
typo: H2O
Every time one of these images is published it should be reported to the relevant pollution control authorities, together with details of the originator, so it can be investigated.
I recall reading recently that Roger Harrabin admitted to taking one of these steam\soot images himself. I trust he reported the incident.
This is an interesting response from Environmental Health & Trading Standards, albeit regarding plumes from domestic condensing boilers.
“We are unable to investigate the complaint if it is only the visual aspect of the plume you are concerned about.”
Click to access Boiler%20Fumes%202011.pdf
Emitting dark smoke is a bad thing if you are a producer. It means that unburned fuel is going up the stack which is costing you money. The very first CCTV installation I saw back in 1969 was in a coal fired power station, it allowed the operators in the control room to monitor the smoke.
That said a coal fired station will produce black smoke when you run the soot blowers which blast all the soot off the boiler tubes. It was written into the plant manual that this was only to be carried out at night.
Excellent point. The same is true for diesel trucks. Black smoke means you’re not burning the fuel efficiently. Maybe in the old days (the sixties or fifties) fuel was so cheap it didn’t matter. After the oil embargo of ’73, efficiency became much more important. The $5/gallon propane last fall (in the US) had the same effect. An increase in cost does result in more efficiency, up to a point. If it goes too high, then people switch to an alternative.