Real-time measurements of formaldehyde emissions from modern vehicles

Formaldehyde (HCHO), a carcinogenic carbonyl compound and precursor of tropospheric ozone, can be found in vehicle exhaust. Even though the continuous monitoring of HCHO has been recommended, the real-world emissions from the road transport sector are not commonly available. The main reason for this knowledge gap has been the difficulty to measure HCHO in real-time and during real-world testing. This, for instance, increases the uncertainty of the O3 simulated by air quality models. The present study investigates real-time HCHO measurements comparing three Fourier-Transform InfraRed spectrometers (FTIRs) and one Quantum Cascade Laser InfraRed spectrometer (QCL-IR) directly sampling from the exhaust of one gasoline pas-senger car, one Diesel commercial vehicle and one Diesel heavy-duty vehicle, all meeting recent European emission standards (Euro 6/VI). Non-negligible emissions of HCHO were measured from the Diesel light-duty vehicle, with emissions increasing as temperature decreased. Rela-tively low emissions were measured for the gasoline and Diesel heavy-duty vehicles. The results showed a good correlation between the different instruments under all the conditions tested (in most cases R2 > 0.9). Moreover, it was shown that HCHO can be accurately measured during on-road and real-world-like tests using instruments based on FTIR and QCL-IR technologies.

SUAREZ BERTOA Ricardo;  SELLERI Tommaso;  GIORIA Roberto;  MELAS Anastasios;  FERRARESE Christian;  FRANZETTI Jacopo;  ARLITT Bertold;  NAGURA Naoki;  HANADA Takaaki;  GIECHASKIEL Barouch; 

2022-11-11

MDPI

JRC130641

1996-1073 (online),   

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/20/7680,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130641,   

10.3390/en15207680 (online),