Impact of regulated pollutant emissions of Euro 6d-Temp light-duty diesel vehicles under real driving conditions

Abstract

The inclusion of the measurement of pollutant emissions under real driving conditions for the vehicle certification, together with the restrictive limits in environmental regulations, has motivated an improvement of active and passive pollution control technologies in order to reduce pollution under both urban and extra-urban conditions. In this work, two Euro 6d-Temp diesel passenger cars, classified in different segments, a C-segment and a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), were tested along a route selected considering the Real Driving Emissions (RDE) test procedure. The tests were carried out in Madrid (Spain), a city with almost 3.3 million of inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.5 million with almost 5 million of vehicles. This work aims to study the contribution of the new generation diesel light-duty vehicles on the urban air quality. Results show great effectiveness of pollution control technologies, since the results of NOx emissions registered were 60% and 76% lower, with the SUV and C-segment vehicle, respectively, than limits established in Euro 6d-Temp regulation. In the case of PN emissions this reduction is even higher, 99% and 88% with SUV and C-segment vehicle, respectively. The opposite trends between NOx and PN for both vehicles revealed the different effectiveness of the pollution control strategies. This work also presents the distribution of emissions along the circuit, identifying the zones more affected regarding the pollution produced by both vehicles.