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The LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology is nowadays considered fundamental for the estimation and analysis of the economic and social impacts coming from the CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) footprint. It is a methodology for evaluating the “environmental footprint” of the product, “from cradle to grave” and it is carried out by quantifying the impacts deriving from both the use of resources and emissions into the environment. The aim of this study is to contribute to environmental assessment in the context of the sustainability of vehicular transport in urban areas. For this reason, through a comparative analysis of the LCA it is possible to evaluate the CO2 emissions deriving from cars during real use and relating to the entire life of the vehicles. Three comparisons were made considering pairs made up of an electric vehicle and an internal combustion vehicle of the same segment and category: small city cars, mid-size and SUV.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is regarded as a promising fuel for spark-ignited (SI) internal combustion engines (ICE) to improve engine thermal efficiency and reduce both carbon dioxide and pollutant emissions. Significant advantages of CNG are higher-octane number, higher hydrogen to carbon ratio, and lower energy-specific CO2 emissions compared with gasoline. More, it can be produced in renewable ways, and is more widespread and cheaper than conventional liquid fossil fuels. In this regard, the direct injection of CNG engines can be considered a promising technology for highly efficient and low-emission future engines. This work reports an experimental and numerical characterization of high-pressure methane jets from a multi-hole injector for direct injection engines.

In the last years, increasing concerns about environmental pollution and fossil sources depletion led transport sectors research and development towards the study of new technologies capable to reduce vehicles emissions and fuel consumption. Direct-injection systems (DI) for internal combustion engines propose as an effective way to achieve these goals. This technology has already been adopted in Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines and, lately, a great interest is growing for its use in natural gas fueling, so increasing efficiency with respect to port-fuel injection ones. Alone or in combination with other fuels, compressed natural gas (CNG) represents an attractive way to reduce exhaust emission (high H/C ratio), can be produced in renewable ways, and is more widespread and cheaper than gasoline or diesel fuels. Gas direct-injection process involves the occurrence of under-expanded jets in the combustion chamber.

Very high pressures for injecting gasoline in internal combustion (i.c.) engines are recently explored for improving the air/fuel mixing process in order to control unburned hydrocarbons (UBHC) and particulate matter emissions such as for investigating new combustion concepts. The challenge remains the improvement of the spray parameters in terms of atomization, smaller droplets and their spread in the combustion chamber in order to enhance the combustion efficiency. In this framework, the raise of the injection pressure plays a key role in GDI engines for the trade-off of CO2 vs other pollutant emissions. This study aims contributing to the knowledge of the physical phenomena and mechanisms occurring when fuel is injected at ultra-high pressures for mapping and controlling the mixture formation.

The Real Driving Emission (RDE) procedure will measure the pollutants, such as NOx, emitted by cars while driven on the road. RDE will not replace laboratory tests, such as the current WLTP but it will be added to them. RDE is complementary to the laboratory-based procedure to check the pollutant emissions level of a light-duty vehicle in real driving conditions. This means that the car will be driven on a real road according to random acceleration and deceleration patterns conditioned by traffic flow. So, the procedure will ensure that cars deliver real emissions over on-road and so the currently observed differences between emissions measured in the laboratory and those measured on road under real-world conditions, will be reduced. However, the identification of a path on the road to check the test conditions of RDE is not easy and hardly repeatable.

The aim of this study is to investigate the parameters influencing the real driving emission monitoring with particular attention towards the influence of road gradient. For this purpose, an experimental activity was carried out with a Euro 5 Diesel light-duty vehicle, driven along two tracks of Naples characterized by a different road gradient: the first pattern is quite flat, the second includes positive (+2.9%) and negative (−3.6%) road gradient. Exhaust emissions of CO, THC, NOx, CO2 were acquired on road by using a portable emission measuring system (PEMS) connected also to the Engine Control Unit for saving the main engine parameters and to the GPS for the geographical coordinates and altitude. The acquired speed profiles were repeated on the chassis-dynamometer without simulating the road gradient.

An experimental campaign was carried out to evaluate the influence of CNG and gasoline on the exhaust emissions and fuel consumption of a bi-fuel passenger car over on-road tests performed in the city of Naples. The chosen route is very traffic congested during the daytime of experimental measurements. An on-board analyzer was used to measure CO, CO2, NOx tailpipe concentrations and the exhaust flow rate. Throughout a carbon balance on the exhaust pollutants, the fuel consumption was estimated. The exact spatial position was acquired by a GPS which allowed to calculate vehicle speed and the traffic condition was monitored by a video camera. Whole trip realized by the vehicle was subdivided in succession of kinematic sequences and the vehicle emissions and fuel consumption were analyzed and presented as value on each kinematic sequence. Moreover, throughout a multivariate statistical analysis of sequences, the driving cycles characterizing the use of vehicle were identified.

The evaluation of vehicles real emissions circulating in urban areas is a basic activity for planning and management of implemented traffic measures aiming at emission control and air quality improvement. National, region, and city emission inventories require overall average emission estimation based on modeling technique with a few input parameters such as fleet composition and mission profile, represented by average speed. But in the field of emission modeling an important open issue is the very expensive costs of experimental campaigns needed to obtain driving cycle statistically representative of driving behavior, also if only in a specific link of a network. A possible approach to deal with this problem is represented by the use of traffic microscopic simulation models which are capable to simulate individual car motion on the basis of traffic conditions, road characteristics and management rules.

Mopeds are popular means of transportation, particularly in southern Europe and in eastern and southern Asia. The relative importance of their emissions increases in urban environments which host large fleets of mopeds. In Naples, for example, mopeds make a considerable contribution to HC emissions (about 53%), although the percentage of mopeds (12.4%) in the total circulating fleet is lower than that of other vehicle categories [1]. This study presents a method for analysing the influence of kinematic parameters on the emission factors of mopeds during the “cold-start” and “hot” phases of elementary kinematic sequences (speed-time profiles between two successive stops). These elementary sequences were obtained through appropriate fragmentation of complex urban driving cycles. In a second step, we show how to estimate, for the whole cycle, the duration of the cold phase and the relevant time-dependence function.

The aim of this study is to develop an experimental approach and statistical methodology to assess the effectiveness of technological measures to improve vehicle emissions in real world use. The ultimate purpose is to provide a tool to support decisions made by public administrators and transit authorities, and assess the costs/benefits of environment-oriented investments. In this paper we report some results from the application of the proposed approach within a research project carried out by the Istituto Motori of the National Research Council of Italy, funded by the Ministry of the Environment, in cooperation with urban and extra-urban public transit companies and other public agencies. Our research focused on measuring particulate emissions in real use with and without an after-treatment device. Tests were performed in three Italian cities (Naples, Palermo and Lecce) using seven buses (homologation class EURO 0, 1 and 2) from three public local transit companies.