Is DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) on vehicles really saving environment?

DPF is now widely installed on cars as an additional tool for cleaning the micro soot particles from diesel engines exhaust gases.

My Range Rover has a DPF, too. Once in 6-8 weeks the PDF computer alarm turns on, announcing that the PDF is full and I have to undertake a special regeneration procedure. In simple terms, I have to drive at a certain speed with engine revolutions not lower than certain speed, until such a driving regime burns out the soot and resets the filter anew, all in all usually taking up to 30-40 minutes per attempt.

You are lucky, if you drive your car mostly on highways for a longer time, then the PDF resetting procedure is easy. However, if you are driving short distances mostly in town, and that is my case (and I guess, that is the case for most of us), then PDF regeneration is a very annoying thing. You have to go somewhere out of town onto a highway (if there is one), and start “burning” gas in vain.

Last time I tried 4 times per 40 minutes and it didn’t want to work!

Now you calculate: I burned half of the gas tank of diesel (about 40 liters) just into the atmosphere, and I didn’t have any luck in resetting the filter, anyway. Not mentioning about 4 hours of time lost in vain and necessity to drive to a dealer (again if there is one nearby!) and leave the car there so that they try to regenerate the filter electronically.

Add to such failed attempt all previous regeneration procedures, which last roughly half an hour of senseless burning of oil, and it makes up to a very good question to Land Rover and to any other car vehicle producers, which install PDF filters: is it truly saving our atmosphere? Or is such a procedure senseless in the end, given the fact that you have to burn extra oil for cleaning the filter and that the soot in any case is burned and thrown into atmosphere, producing one visible black puff.

If yes, then wouldn’t it be more logical to apply a different, more convenient and efficient burning procedure (maybe through some electronic heating and cleaning), especially for such otherwise clever and exclusive cars like Land Rovers?