Analytical Comparison of Real Drive Emission from Passenger Vehicle at different altitude operating conditions

As a major checkpoint in Automotive Emission Regulation worldwide, the Real Drive Emission(RDE) has been introduced to regulate the amount of pollutants in real on-road driving conditions, where altitude also find its importance along with driving pattern. Vehicular Exhaust Pollutants such as CO, NOx, CO2, PM & PN are the main targeted items being concentrated at this stage. Among them NOx, CO & CO2 are pollutants which will vary in connection to the atmospheric ambient conditions where the vehicles are being operated. For an instance, in our targeted case of testing at higher altitudes CO & NOx levels are found to be higher than those when tested at normal RDE regulatory altitude limits. As the altitude increases, the amount of oxygen present in the atmosphere decreases, which can cause the combustion process in an ICE to operate at a lesser efficient stoichiometric composition than when done at sea level. This will in-turn produce more pollutant levels as a byproduct of such altered compensative functioning(combustion), which will ultimately lead to elevated levels of harmful pollutants into the atmosphere. Hence, there is a significant need to consider various altitude levels as test zones for possible RDE boundary condition to be included in the near future. For this proposed study, a calibrated PEMS equipment is being used to perform the on road RDE test trials in carefully formulated test routes in which 2 different fuel based vehicles (1 MPi GSL & 2 CRDi DSL) were validated such that it satisfies all the necessary test boundary conditions to obtain valid results. This mentioned study will serve its ideal purpose in identification of critical areas of vehicle EMS mapping and suggesting necessary improvements to reduce overall pollutants without compensating on the regular performance which is nominally expected by the vehicle operator.