New Approaches to Vehicle Emissions Inspections
Last Tuesday, Cita hosted a new online event entitled “New Approaches to Vehicle Emissions Inspections.” The webinar covered the findings from the first month of vehicle emissions data collected using the parSYNC® iPEMS under the 3DATX Sponsored PTI Trial. The data were collected by OPUS at their Borås, Sweden site.
The current PTI test protocols and emissions checks, CO for petrol and smoke opacity for diesel, do not have the capability to measure particle number (PN) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions from current technology vehicles. As a consequence, the current PTI program is unable to identify PN and NOx high-emitters. It is therefore important to update the PTI test, and the use of integrated PEMS (iPEMS) solutions in a new PTI procedure (NPTI) to achieve this is an appealing solution. At the Borås site, an engine idle PN test and two different NOx tests (one dynamic acceleration test and one stationary high idle test) are being performed on a growing number of vehicles. Initial findings are promising, with high repeatability for individual vehicles and a wide range of results between vehicles, indicating good sensitivity of the equipment and protocol to vehicle emission levels. As the number of vehicles tested increases, 3DATX will further the investigation into the effectiveness of the protocol and be able to assess thresholds for pass/fail criteria.