Using passenger buses to destroy ozone

bus moving on city streetImagine cleaning the air as your bus rolls down the road.

That's exactly what happens in buses—and trucks— equipped with BASF Catalysts PremAir® catalyst. When applied to heat exchange surfaces on vehicles, PremAir turns cars into "smog-eating" machines that destroy ground-level ozone, the primary component of smog.

Exposure to ozone smog has been linked to respiratory illness and crop damage. this harmful compound is formed in the lower atmosphere when automotive and industrial emissions are exposed to heat and sunlight. According to the American Lung Association, half of the American public breathes unhealthy levels of ozone some time during the year. Millions of people living in urban areas around the world are similarly exposed.

Now, for the first time, PremAir offers a way to destroy ozone already in the air. Traditional pollution-control strategies stop automotive and industrial emissions at the source, before they reach the environment. No mattter how effective traditional systems are, however, a small but significant percentage of contamination can reach the air. PremAir offers a way to attack the resulting ozone. Tests have shown that the catalyst can destroy up to 80% of ozone in the air passing over it.

Buses process huge amounts of ambient air over their radiators and air-conditioning condensers. And, becuase the radiator and condenser are located on different parts of the bus, they don't process the same air. The typical bus radator, for example, processes more than three million cubic feet or air per day, while the average bus-air-conditioning condenser processes another one million cubic feet of air. Thus, the "smog-eating" capacity of a bus equipped with PremAir catalyst on its radiator and air-conditioning condenser is significant.

In October 1996, BASF Catalysts began testing buses equipped with PremAir-coated radiators and air-conditioning condensers in three California municipalities—Palm Springs, Riverside and Sacramento—located in the Los Angeles basin. Tests after a year of operation demonstrated that the technology destoryed 60% to 70% of the ozone in the ambient air that passed over the coated surfaces. SunLine Transit (Palm Springs), which participated in the demonstration, has equipped more than 30 of its passenger buses with PremAir-coated radiators and air-conditioning condensers.

At Sunline, measured ozone conversion during on-road driving was 77% for the catalyst-coated radiator and 50% for the catalyst-coated air-conditioning condenser. Long-term mileage accumulation up to 200,000 miles per bus showed excellent coating durability and retention for both the radiators and the condensers.

PremAir can also be applied to radiators and air-conditioning condensers in trucks to achieve similar ozone destruction.

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