On a cold, dreary day last week when Shanghai was shrouded in its heaviest smog of this year, the emissions-control arm of Faurecia, the world’s biggest player in its field, broke ground for construction on its new Asia-China headquarters for research and development.

Located in an industrial park in the city’s Minhang District, the new facility will run an emissions control testing lab when it opens in 2017. The center will also include a prototype shop and an Asia standard equipment integration center. Manufacturing equipment assembled there will be shipped to France-based Faurecia’s 15 plants in China.

The new location will be able to support 250 development programs a year by 2020, signaling the expected surge in demand for cleaner exhaust systems. Faurecia’s first research and development center for emissions control in China, when opened in 2009, counted its programs in the lower double digits.

China’s stated determination to clear up its murky skies creates an unprecedented opportunity for Faurecia to promote its development of technology to eliminate pollutants in vehicle exhaust.

Next year, the Nanterre-based company will launch the production of its gasoline particulate filter, which helps remove the fine particles endemic to China’s air quality problem. The level of those particles tends to rise in the latest direct-injection and turbo-charging engines ­— a by-product of the nation’s trend of engine downsizing for greater fuel economy.

Starting in 2017, Faurecia’s diesel particulate filter, co-invented with French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën, will become the standard operating procedure for two carmakers in China. The filter has been proven to be 99.97 percent effective in eliminating the particulates.

Separately, a project called ammonia storage delivery system (ASDS) retrofit is showing great promise in its early stages. It is designed to meet China’s National XI emission standard for diesel engine cars, now being drafted.

In demonstration programs in Shanghai and Beijing, diesel bus fleets were outfitted with updates to the third-generation selective catalytic reduction technologies of Faurecia. It reduces hazardous nitrogen oxides in exhaust gas without changing vehicle design.

Compared with the last-generation technology, called AdBlue, the conversion rate of hazardous nitrogen oxides to harmless nitrogen and water rises from 35 percent to 66 percent with the adoption of ASDS, which can cut 300 kilograms of those emissions per car a year.

Data are collected from a real-time emission monitoring program run on the demonstration vehicles over five months and 60,000 kilometers of driving.

“We are using this for development purposes, but we understand from the Chinese government, the long-term perspective is to use it for emissions-control legislation,” Mathias Miedreich, president of Faurecia Emissions Control Technologies Asia Division, said in an interview with Shanghai Daily.

Miedreich said he expects real-time monitoring to be an effective precaution against prevailing cheating in emissions control by diesel vehicle drivers.

“But we still need to ask why people do that,” he said. “It is either because it’s too expensive or too inconvenient. So it becomes our duty to make emissions control affordable and comfortable to use.”

Taking ASDS as an example, its exhaust control system, by storing ammonia as a solid and releasing it as a gas in accurate doses to a catalyst, adds no risk of deposits such as those found in the liquid-based AdBlue system. That reduces problems and maintenance costs. With its fast activation of nitrogen oxides conversion, ASDS excels at the lower exhaust temperatures typical of urban driving, even outside the New European Driving Cycle, the company said.

The New European Driving Cycle is a series of data points representing the speed of a vehicle versus time, on which Europe and also China set their emission standards. Although the regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, they use a reference point established 40 years ago and last updated in 1997. It has been criticized as completely out of touch with modern-day needs.

Miedreich said it would be good for China to develop its own vehicle certification cycle according to its own driving conditions, which include more mid- to low-speed driving scenarios than in Europe.

Abstract from a Faurecia white paper: a simple guide to understanding the environmental impact of vehicles:

What to remember:

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but it is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after water vapor. The most-targeted air pollutants are particulate matter — a complex mix of extremely small particles and liquid droplets in the atmosphere, including aerosols, smoke, fumes, dust, ash, pollen — as well as nitrogen oxides.

How are they connected to cars?

Internal combustion engines produce carbon dioxide, making cars a contributor to global warming. In Europe, transportation accounts for nearly 25 percent of CO2 emissions. Diesel engines generate 20 percent less carbon dioxide than gasoline engines.

Vehicle exhausts emit these fine particles. Yet all forms of transportation combined account for just 16 percent of emissions of particulate matter smaller than 10 microns in diameter (known as PM10), far behind industry and the services sector.

Nitrogen oxides are mostly produced by burning fossil fuels. Contrary to popular opinion, cars account for only 20 percent of those emissions. Diesel vehicles emit much more than their gasoline counterparts.

How can we reduce emissions?

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions means cutting fuel consumption, a goal achievable through various means, such as hybrid engines, electric cars, smaller engines, aerodynamics and reduced rolling resistance, lighter vehicles and exhaust heat recovery.

Diesel particulate filters have been a widely adopted solution since 2009, when related requirements of the Euro 5 emission standard were introduced. Use of gasoline particulate filters still awaits new regulations, expected to be introduced in September 2017.

Diesel engine cars incorporate a close-coupled selective catalytic reduction system using a urea-based fluid to covert nitrogen oxides into harmless nitrogen and water. To the same end, gasoline engine cars rely on three-way catalytic converters using rare metals as a catalyst.