Urine To Dampen Truck Pollution

By Agence France-Presse Trucks in Europe will soon be equipped with a new type of exhaust filter that uses animal urine to cut down on harmful pollutants, a Swiss-based engineering institute said. The Paul Scherrer Institute said at least one truck manufacturer is ready to introduce the technology next year, with more likely to follow as European emissions regulations for diesel vehicles are progressively tightened after 2005. Truckers driving vehicles equipped with the "Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR)" system will fill up a small tank of purified, colorless urea solution more or less each time they stop for diesel fuel, project leader Oliver Kroecher said. "There is a consortium of industrial chemical producers in Europe which have joined to bring this urea solution on the market under the commercial name 'Adblue.' It will be distributed Europe-wide," he said. Urea is already a basic ingredient of many fertilizers. The catalytic converter system, developed in close conjunction with the motor industry, is said to cut sulfur dioxide emissions from diesel engines, which have been linked to acid rain and the formation of low-level ozone pollution in cities in summer. Kroecher said the technology was better suited to heavy-duty diesel engines and was unlikely to find its way into passenger cars in the near future. Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2004