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Light duty gasoline vehicles (LDGV) are estimated to contribute 40% of the total on-road mobile source tailpipe emissions of particulate matter (PM) in California. While considerable efforts have been made to reduce toxic diesel PM emissions going into the future, less emphasis has been placed on PM from LDGVs. The goals of this work were to characterize a small fleet of visibly smoking and high PM emitting LDGVs, to explore the potential PM-reduction benefits of Smog Check and of repairs, and to examine remote sensing devices (RSD) as a potential method for identifying high PM emitters in the in-use fleet. For this study, we recruited a fleet of eight vehicles covering a spectrum of PM emission levels. PM and criteria pollutant emissions were quantified on a dynamometer and CVS dilution tunnel system over the Unified Cycle using standard methods and real time PM instruments.

Vehicles that meet the Federal Tier II and the California LEV II Vehicle Standards (e.g. ULEV and SULEV) are a rapidly growing percentage of the fleet. Sales weighted fleet average emissions of new vehicles are already below the LEV certification levels and should be below ULEV certification levels within two years. ULEV and SULEV vehicles represent the “typical” vehicle future for the next decade or two. Data on particulate emissions from these vehicles are currently very limited. In this study, emission tests using the standard Federal Test Procedure (FTP) were conducted on a small in-use vehicle fleet of ULEV and SULEV vehicles to determine their particulate matter mass emission rates, chemical compositions, particle numbers, and particle size distributions. Particulate sampling utilized Teflon filters for mass determination and quartz filters + PUF-XAD cartridges for chemical speciation. Each bag of the test was sampled separately.