The researcher from the Fuel and Engines Group at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) Magín Lapuerta and the doctorate student Sofía González-Correa recently travelled to the Chillean Andes to participate in a campaign for measuring emissions from fuel pollutants and studying the effect they have on snow-covered surfaces. 

The campaign, which lasted fifteen days, was carried out in the El Puerto del Portillo area and the El Yeso reservoir by a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers from the Ciudad Real Higher School of Industrial Engineering and others from the Centre for Environmental Technologies at the Federico Santa Maria Technical University in Chile which professor Lapuerta has collaborated with for almost a decade. 

The El Portillo and El Yeso glaciers were chosen because the Centre for Environmental Technologies at the Federico Santa Maria Technical University in Chile has two platforms on them with the instrumentation required to carry out the studies. Also, as professor Magín Lapuerta explains about El Puerto del Portillo “it so happens that it is the area over which all goods transport passes from Argentina to Chile and vice-versa. Therefore, we positioned ourselves on a line perpendicular to the road to carry out the research.   

Lapuerta and González-Correa indicate that although the study funded by the Spanish and Chilean governments is a local study, it has worldwide ramifications, since it “works to raise awareness among people about the environmental effects fuel pollutants have on climate change and to help governments take possible measures for designing roads and restricting traffic”. 

UCLM Communication Office Ciudad Real, 22nd of September 2022