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October 13, 2015

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Diesel buses to get air filters by end of the year

FIVE thousand of Shanghai’s diesel-powered buses will be fitted with emission filters by the end of the year as part of efforts to reduce air pollution, the city government said yesterday.

The move comes after similar devices were attached to 200 buses last year. The success of that trail — the filters were found to reduce emissions of PM2.5 particles by more than 95 percent — prompted the authorities’ decision to roll out the scheme across the city.

“Shanghai has about 8,000 buses that run on diesel, though 3,000 of them are set to be taken out of service next year and will be excluded from the refit program,” said Huang Wenming, an engineer with Shanghai Ba-Shi Public Transportation Group, which is in charge of the scheme.

“Any new vehicles that we buy will be powered by clean energy, which means the diesel vehicles will be gradually phased out. In the meantime, however, the addition of the filters will help to reduce the emissions from the existing fleet,” he told Shanghai Daily.

PM2.5 particles are responsible for the black fumes that are frequently seen belching from the exhaust pipes of diesel-powered buses.

“With the new filters fitted, there’s hardly any smoke,” Huang said, adding that they also have very little impact on the performance of the vehicles’ engines.

According to the Shanghai Motor Vehicle Inspection Center, the devices also help to reduce emissions of carbon monoxide by 60 percent and hydrocarbons by more than 70 percent.

The government said in a statement on its website yesterday that it is planning also to fit the filters to diesel trucks used by the city’s postal and sanitation companies.

In 2013, it set a target to cut levels of PM2.5 particles in the air by 20 percent by 2017.




 

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