The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) will launch its first Liquefied Natural Gas(LNG)-powered bus service on Monday as part of the ambitious goal to switch over to green fuel to bring down fleet’s operational cost and reduce pollution.
The first service of the LNG-powered bus from the KSRTC’s central bus station at Thampanoor here to Kochi will be flagged off by the Transport Minister, Antony Raju. The daily services will be in the Ernakulam-Thiruvananthapuram-Ernakulam and Kozhikode-Ernakulam-Ernakulam sectors.
The services are using the two air-conditioned buses handed over by the Petronet LNG Limited to the KSRTC for operating the services on trial basis for three months. Technical and economic feasibility studies were on for three months after taking temporary permit for the bus. The KSRTC has already issued order to convert 400 diesel powered bus into LNG.
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The service from Ernakulam at 5 a.m. will reach the state capital at 11.15 a.m. and the return service from 2 p.m. from Thiruvananthapuram will reach Ernakulam at 8.15 p.m. The service from Ernakulam at 6.30 a.m. will reach Kozhikode at 12.30 noon and the return service at 2.30 p.m. will reach Ernakulam at 8.20 p.m.
The Transport Minister said the feedback of commuters, the bus crew and the mechanical staff will be collected by KSRTC during trials in three months.
After the one month’s trial run, the KSRTC and Petronet engineers will also carry out a trial run of the LNG powered buses in the hilly regions of Munnar with a load of six tonnes in the bus.
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Conversion of a diesel bus to liquefied natural gas will involve an expenditure of ₹25 lakh. The KSRTC hopes to bring down the fuel bill by converting the fleet into LNG and CNG as one kg of CNG is equivalent to 1.39 litre of petrol and 1.18 litre of diesel.