Quantifying on-road emissions from gasoline-powered motor vehicles: accounting for the presence of medium- and heavy-duty diesel trucks.

Vehicle emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), organic aerosol (OA), and black carbon (BC) were measured at the Caldecott tunnel in the San Francisco Bay Area. Measurements were made in bore 2 of the tunnel, where light-duty (LD) vehicles accounted for >99% of total traffic and heavy-duty trucks were not allowed. Prior emission studies conducted in North America have often assumed that route- or weekend-specific prohibitions on heavy-duty truck traffic imply that diesel contributions to pollutant concentrations measured in on-road settings can be neglected. However, as light-duty vehicle emissions have declined, this assumption can lead to biased results, especially for pollutants such as NOx, OA, and BC, for which diesel-engine emission rates are high compared to corresponding values for gasoline engines. In this study, diesel vehicles (mostly medium-duty delivery trucks with two axles and six tires) accounted for <1% of all vehicles observed in the tunnel but were nevertheless responsible for (18 ± 3)%, (22 ± 6)%, and (45 ± 8)% of measured NOx, OA, and BC concentrations. Fleet-average OA and BC emission factors for light-duty vehicles are, respectively, 10 and 50 times lower than for heavy-duty diesel trucks. Using measured emission factors from this study and publicly available data on taxable fuel sales, as of 2010, LD gasoline vehicles were estimated to be responsible for 85%, 18%, 18%, and 6% of emissions of CO, NOx, OA, and BC, respectively, from on-road motor vehicles in the United States.

On-road measurement of gas and particle phase pollutant emission factors for individual heavy-duty diesel trucks.

Pollutant concentrations in the exhaust plumes of individual diesel trucks were measured at high time resolution in a highway tunnel in Oakland, CA, during July 2010. Emission factors for individual trucks were calculated using a carbon balance method, in which pollutants measured in each exhaust plume were normalized to measured concentrations of carbon dioxide. Pollutants considered here include nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)), carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ethene, and black carbon (BC), as well as optical properties of emitted particles. Fleet-average emission factors for oxides of nitrogen (NO(x)) and BC respectively decreased 30 ± 6 and 37 ± 10% relative to levels measured at the same location in 2006, whereas a 34 ± 18% increase in the average NO(2) emission factor was observed. Emissions distributions for all species were skewed with a small fraction of trucks contributing disproportionately to total emissions. For example, the dirtiest 10% of trucks emitted half of total NO(2) and BC emissions. Emission rates for NO(2) were found to be anticorrelated with all other species considered here, likely due to the use of catalyzed diesel particle filters to help control exhaust emissions. Absorption and scattering cross-section emission factors were used to calculate the aerosol single scattering albedo (SSA, at 532 nm) for individual truck exhaust plumes, which averaged 0.14 ± 0.03.