Measuring Vehicle Particle Emission Factors: Applications and Techniques

• Author / Creator

  Momenimovahed, Ali

• The experimental work described in this thesis was conducted to study the particulate emissions from different automotive applications. The effect of fuel choice (gasoline vs. liquefied petroleum gas, LPG) on particle emissions from passenger vehicles was studied. It was shown LPG produces 5 times and 2 times less particles than gasoline in terms of number and mass emission factors, respectively. The effect of engine technology (2-stroke vs. 4-stroke) was also evaluated on particulate emissions from two wheelers. The particle emission factors from two wheelers were also compared with the values for passenger vehicles. It was found that two wheelers produce more particles than passenger vehicles on a per kilometer basis and they should be regulated in terms of particulate emissions as proposed for light duty vehicles. The effects of fuel choice and exhaust aftertreatment were also studied on diesel and CNG transit buses. It was shown that either CNG conversion or diesel particulate filters can improve the particle number emission factors relative to diesel buses. The feasibility and the accuracy of using an effective density function to measure the particle mass emission factor using particle size distributions for GDI vehicles was also examined. It is recommended that the size distribution effective density function method can be used with an uncertainty of 20% but only for the non-volatile fraction of the particles.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Transit bus
  • Gasoline direct injection
  • Effective density
  • Particulate emissions

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R39X0Z

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.