The University and the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District were recently awarded a clean diesel grant by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, or IEPA, the largest clean diesel grant ever awarded by the IEPA.

The $445,000 grant, issued by the IEPA through its Illinois Clean Diesel Program — part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more commonly known as President Barack Obama’s stimulus package — will be used to install diesel particulate filters on most, if not all, the CUMTD fleet of buses.

The grant was awarded after a four-year effort, led by Xinlei Wang, associate professor in the department of agricultural and biological engineering.

The filters capture 90 percent of diesel soot and 85 percent of the hydrocarbons and carbon monoxides emitted from buses.

“In 2006, I was awarded a $50,000 grant from the (national) EPA for a pilot, and we installed the filters and ran them in the streets and evaluated the emissions and reductions. Results were good, so we wanted to promote this technology and put the filters on all the buses.” Wang said.

However, the process to obtain this money was not an easy one.

“I talked to (national) EPA to put filters on the other buses but got denied, then we found out we could go to the Illinois EPA, (after applying) the third time, we got it.” Wang said.

Darwin Burkhart, manager of the Clean Air Program at the IEPA, was one of the people Wang contacted, and together they overcame the various obstacles for the grant money by joining forces with the University and CUMTD.

“Well, it got denied a third time, not because it wouldn’t be successful. They only had so much money to go around,” Burkhart said. “When we applied, we had already allocated the funds given by the federal applications. Unfortunately there was so much competition.”

Funding was available when other projects were cancelled, leaving the money previously allocated to these projects to be claimed by CUMTD and the University, Burkhart said.

The IEPA announced the grant at a press conference Oct. 13. The diesel grant will bring many benefits to the Champaign-Urbana area which includes students and faculty, making public transportation a more desirable and eco-friendly option.

“When people choose to ride transit instead of their vehicle, they can make a huge impact on the environmental effect of their travel. We use the filters, soy biodiesel, and we’ve recently purchased hybrid buses, overall lowering the emissions from the buses,” said Jan Kijowski, marketing director for CUMTD.

“The goal is for, within the next two years, have the 100 percent of the fleet be clean,” Wang said.

“The total reduction will be 5.7 tons per year and 81 tons reduced over the lifetime of a bus, and the air will be much cleaner for students. We’re the first in Illinois and one of the first in the nation, truly a national leader.”