Emissions Analytics has successfully completed its part of a three-year, Innovate UK-funded project to help understand the benefits of low-carbon commercial vehicles. This included 34 tests covering 11,374 miles over 246 hours, and generating over 2.5 million data points.
Evaluating heavy duty vehicles retrofitted with a dual fuel diesel/compressed natural gas system in the trial, the Evaluation of Natural Gas Trucks and Refuelling in Swindon (ENTRIS) project required Emissions Analytics to provide its expertise and laboratory-grade testing. The data captured during real-world and lab tests provided a unique insight into the reality of dual fuel and CNG conversion systems.
In addition to discovering the ramifications of dual fuel retrofits, the testing has proven that PEMS can be effectively used with heavy duty vehicles over long distances in order to monitor real, on-road operations.
A total of 55 vehicles were used in the project, all fitted with systems manufactured by Prins. Emissions Analytics then monitored one of each vehicle model at regular intervals for the duration of the trial to understand how these converted vehicles performed under everyday operating conditions.
Recording tailpipe outputs, the standard suite of gases – CO, CO2, NO, NO2 and THCs – were all measured with a gas analyzer, but the scope of the project allowed Emissions Analytics to also employ a Pegasor Mi2 system to evaluate particulate matter.
The project runs from January 2013 to March 2016, and the projects’ consortium members include three truck operators: Howard Tenens, John Lewis Partnership and Lenham Storage. In addition, telematics specialist CMS SupaTrak provided the vital link between Emissions Analytics’ data and the tracking of vehicles as they travelled the country.
Plotting emissions data against position, speed and even altitude, the test used a set route between Swindon and Manchester in the UK. Given the time span of the test, it was also possible to chart any seasonal effects on the final figures. The wealth of data collected allowed the whole team to understand the relationship between a vehicle’s behavior and the specific emissions generated. With the systems capturing one data point every second, a total of 2.5 million data points were collected and analyzed.
May 12, 2016
