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The College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research and Technology at the University of California, Riverside and Honda Motor Company are conducting a cooperative research program to study the emission characteristics and evaluate the environmental impact of advanced technology vehicles designed to have emission rates at, or below, the California ULEV standard. This program involves a number of technical challenges relating to instrumentation capable of measuring emissions at these low levels and utilizing this instrumentation to gather data under realistic conditions that will allow assessments of the environmental impact of these advanced vehicle technologies. This paper presents results on the performance and suitability of a Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) based on-board measurement system developed principally by Honda R&D for this task. This system has been designed to simultaneously measure vehicle exhaust and ambient roadway pollutant concentrations.

Measuring the real-world performance of emission control technologies is an important aspect in the development of advanced low-emission vehicles. In addition, data acquired from such measurements can be used to improve the accuracy of air quality predictive models. Honda has developed an on-board sampling/analysis system capable of measuring on-road emissions at ULEV levels and below. Ambient air can be analyzed simultaneously. This FTIR-based system can measure several species; this paper will focus on NMHC, NOX, and CO. Techniques were developed to address the challenges associated with acquiring accurate real-time data at concentrations below 1 ppm in an on-road vehicle. Validation studies performed with reference gases and vehicle exhaust indicate a very good correlation between the on-road analyzer system and classic bench methods for all target compounds. Dynamic studies performed by the University of California, Riverside, also show good correlation.