Researchers of Sakarya University initiated a multidisciplinary research program in the year 2006 to evaluate the effects of Transport, Residential, and Industrial sourced air pollutants on urban air quality and the effects of the pollutants on human health. This research program, which is known as “Sakarya Air Quality Protection and Improvement (SAHAKK-I) Project”, was further supported by Sakarya Governorship and Sakarya Municipality. Then the aim of research programme was extended as providing scientific and technical support to policy makers and relevant industrial establishments for sustainable development.
Transport is crucial for economic and social development of a society as it serves a key role for transportation of goods and people. But it is not free of negative externalities. Operation of transport vehicles require energy use and this energy is mostly generated with fossil fuel combustion. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel combustion comes with both global emissions (CO2, N2O, CH4), which cause climate change, and local emissions (PM, NOx, HC, CO, O3), which cause adverse health effects and damage natural environment.
Road Transport has varieties of vehicles and each vehicle has its own advantages depending on the activity. Therefore, depending on the activity, transport vehicles must be optimized to mitigate such negative externalities and also to be ready for international requirements such as: UNECE convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, European Community National Emission Ceilings Directive, and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.
Municipality busses that are used for urban transport are the main market for hybrid busses. The metropolitan municipalities of İstnabul, Ankara, and İzmir (the biggest three cities of Turkey) have more than 5000 busses for urban transport. Furthermore, the other busses that belong to legal persons are not included to this. This means the improvements made to urban transport by means of hybrid busses will have important effects on urban air quality and noise. Thus, these improvements will have a positive effect on human health and qulaity of life in urban area. Morever, any reduction in urban transport fuel consumption will provide important benefits for Turkish Economy.
As a main producer of urban transport busses, TEMSA R&D and Technology Ltd. is currently planning to develop and produce hybrid busses and improve both national and international market share of TEMSA R&D and Technology Ltd. One of the important step in the production is the quantification of the bus emissions in real world in-use conditions. Currnetly there is no world wide harmonized hybrid bus emission test protochol but EPA and EC-JRC completed their heavy-duty vehicle test protochol and working to extend their protochol to other vehicles.
In this sense being competible with EPA and EC-JRC and be ready for future legislative rules and limits will have positive effects on the competitveness and market share of TEMSA R&D and Technology Ltd. In order to do that v. wants to initiate a SANTEZ reserch project in collaboration with SAHAKK-I research group of Sakarya University. SAHAKK-I research group is known to be the only research group that performs research on real world in-use vehicle emissions in Turkey.
Since road transport is one of the main sources of urban air pollution in crowded cities of Turkey, quantifying and inventorying of the emissions are extremely important to search alternative methods to mitigate the air pollution. Buses, which are main vehicle for transportation of people in cities of Turkey, are one of the major air pollution sources of road transport and there is a strong need for searching alternative power sources for busses to minimize their emissions. In order to meet this need TEMSA R&D and Technology Ltd and Sakarya University want to search capabilities of hybrid busses to minimize the emissions and hence improve urban air quality.
As a result these two establishments propose the SANTEZ project objecting the measurement and modeling of the real world in-use emissions of busses, which is planned to be used as a tool in the decision-making process, for the buses in-use. This model is expected to have a capability to quantify the emissions of the conventional and hybrid busses in a trip with a given operating conditions. This model will provide scientific and technical support to TEMSA R&D and Technology Ltd for their decisions on the production of hybrid busses, and therefore increase their competitiveness with the best decisions on correct timing.
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