Global Journalist: India's air pollution crisis

Recently an international cricket match in the Indian city of Delhi had to be temporarily halted in the middle of the game for an unusual reason. The cause: air pollution levels were so high that a top player for India's opponent, Sri Lanka, began vomiting on the field.

India has had air pollution problems for years, but recently it has gotten significantly worse. Pollution was so bad in New Delhi last month the government ordered thousands of schools closed and banned trucks from the road for a week. During the Hindu festival of Diwali in October, the country’s Supreme Court outlawed the sale of fireworks in an effort to prevent the recurrence of a toxic fog that engulfed the city during last year’s festival.

Even people in notoriously polluted China can breathe easy by comparison: on one day last month levels of cancer causing particulates in New Delhi’s air were 10 times that in Beijing, and nearly 14 times above levels considered healthy.

But India’s problem goes far beyond New Delhi. According to the World Health Organization, the country has 13 of the world’s 25 most polluted cities. And in 2015, the British medical journal The Lancet reported that 1.1 million Indians died prematurely from diseases caused by air pollution.

On this edition of Global Journalist, we take an in-depth look at India's pollution crisis.

Joining the program:

*Vidhi Doshi, India correspondent for the Washington Post

*Santosh Harish, associate director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago's India program

*Jyoti Pande Lavakare, co-founder and president of the advocacy group Care for Air

*Anil Kumar Singh, head of the respiratory health department at Charak Hospital in Lucknow, India

Assistant producers: Ailean Beaton, Edom Kassaye, Courtney Manning, Rayna Sims

Supervising producer: Lauren Wortman

Visual editor: Aleissa Bleyl

[mrkmrk.n]

"It is a completely new environment, that human being are not really supposed to be in"

[littletraveller]

Where’s Greta when you actually need her. And extinction rebellion. This is where they should be. I remember as a kid visiting India and the buses in Delhi had those side exhausts that shoved our horrible smoke right into your car window next to it at the traffic lights.
When tourism stops, these guys will take action

[caiyuhui]

India's good, I mean Indians feel good.

[najibyarzerachic]

Cricket game stopped for pollution. It is pretty alarming. The situation is no better in other big cities in all South Asian region such as Dhaka, Agra, khtmandu and Lahore

[adesssingh]

I shall briefly take you through the application and importance of this work.

Just as humans, engines too breathe. The engine breathes in air from the atmosphere, which is mixed with fuel and this is ignited. The engine draws energy from the combustion of fuel and then breath out the remains of that combustion back into the atmosphere.

The exhausts of engines contain very fine particles of sizes ranging from 1 micron, 2.5 micron to 10 micron. (A human hair has width of 50 microns). These fine exhaust particles are coated with harmful allergens and cancer causing chemicals called PAH (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons).
Because of the small size of the particles they travel deep in to the lungs and even penetrate the blood vessels causing serious problems.

The World Health Organization in a detailed study has concluded that 7 million people die premature deaths due to vehicular pollution each year. (7 million is the population of a city like Hyderabad or is the entire population of the state of Connecticut in America.)

Till now the automobile industry has attempted to reduce this problem by putting filters in the path of exiting exhaust gas. This is a partial and inadequate solution. The DPF (Diesel Particulate filter) restricts the outflow of exhaust gases making the engine do more work and burn more fuel. The DPF gets choked with soot which needs to be burnt for which fuel is sprayed on it and ignited. This processes called ‘regeneration’ does burn the soot but particles of even smaller size are generated. Also the non burnable part remains and permanently chokes the DPF. For this the DPF needs to undergo expensive servicing and replacement even before one tenth the life of the vehicle is over. Other than this it entails multiple sensors and controls that make it very expensive with a very limited efficient range of operation.

These filters and in line gas treatments like catalytic converters, all increase the resistance to the out flow of exhaust gas.
Similar to a human who has many scarves tied around his face and is attempting to walk or run. Such a person will have to do lot of work simply to breath out air and so this person will work way below his ability.

Presently available technology, because it uses resistive filters, suffers from an inverse relationship. If particulate matter is reduced, NOx and CO and fuel consumption is increased. If NOx is reduced particulate matter is increased.

Our innovation, CentriAirFlow10000g (PST10000g) uses the high speed of exhaust gases to cause a very high centrifugal force to act on the exhaust gas, which separates the particulate matter which is entrapped in a suitable trap. CentriAirFlow10000g actually helps the flow of exhaust gases and reduces the effort engine has to do to expel the exhaust gas. This increases engine efficiency and also reduces NOx and CO.

In any case, world over, there are 1.2 Billion on road four wheelers (with 260, 000 added each day) with service life of over 12 years which cannot be wished away and will continue to pollute as present technology and any new technology does not address the on road vehicles.

For the first time, with CentriAirFlow10000g, the following objectives are achieved simultaneously:
1) Removes particulate matter from engine exhaust
2) Reduces NOx and CO emissions.
3) Reduces fuel consumption by 12% to 15%
4) An environment upgrade is made available at reduced total cost and also saves money for the owner.
The innovation fits all engines irrespective of the vintage of the engine or the type of fuel used.

The technology readiness of the innovation is at level 7 (as per United States Department of Defence classification, which has levels from 1 to 9 (attached)).

The innovation is robustly protected by Patents till 2035, in United States, European Union and India, offering a formidable entry barrier and a promising business opportunity.


Please feel free to ask any clarification.

Best regards
Adess
[phone]

[mayankparmar]

We all know what Britain did to environment during industrial revolution. So, on Comparison.. I think we are doing relatively better.

[Ajayojha]

Delhi is the most polluted city in india as well as world.