British cities to get air-filtering buses
The micro particles sucked into the filters weighed the equivalent of a tennis ball
British transportation company, Go-ahead, with 5,000 buses under their command is bringing out 11 new buses across England, that filter the air as they go, said a CNN report.
Public transportation is a much greener approach than driving a car which Go-ahead want to adapt more successfully as they fit their new buses with a three-filter rooftop filtration system that sucks out pollution and ultra-fine particles from the air.
Go-ahead worked with Pall Aerospace, a manufacturer of filtration system for commercial and military aircrafts, to develop the filtration technology.
The buses will roll out in Oxford, Plymouth, Newcastle, Manchester, Crawley and Brighton from the summer, after a successful trial of one bus in Southampton, which was found to be capable of "cleaning" 3.2 million cubic meters (113 million cubic feet) of city air in 100 days.
The buses themselves are fueled by diesel, a spokesperson confirmed, though he said the engines were "Euro 6"-compliant -- a vehicle emissions standard set as acceptable by the European Union.
"We want to play our part in tackling the crisis in urban air quality and show that buses can be integral to cleaning up our cities," David Brown, Go-Ahead's chief executive, said in a statement to CNN.
While Go-Ahead is believed to be the first company in the UK to develop an air-filtering bus, it is not the first in the world.
Buses fitted with a rooftop air filtration system were rolled out in Delhi in 2018, in a move designed to help tackle the city's pollution problem.
The five buses were developed by the Manav Rachna Innovation and Incubation Centre as part of a pilot, with 30 more buses set to be introduced in future, according to India's Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change.