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In the last ten years, the number of natural gas vehicles worldwide has grown rapidly with the biggest contribution coming from the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions. As natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, the exhaust emissions from natural gas spark ignition vehicles are lower than those of gasoline powered vehicles. Moreover, natural gas is less affected by price fluctuations and its resources are more evenly widespread over the globe than to oil. However, as natural gas vehicles are usually bi-fuel gasoline and natural gas, the excellent knock resistant characteristics of natural gas cannot be completely exploited. This paper shows the results of an experimental activity performed on a passenger car fuelled alternatively by gasoline and compressed natural gas (CNG). The vehicle has been tested on a chassis dynamometer over standard (NEDC) and real driving cycles (Artemis CADC), allowing to investigate a wide range of operating conditions.

A wide investigation on powered two-wheelers (PTWs) is presented, aiming at the analysis of the influence of the driving characteristics on PTWs exhaust emissions and fuel consumption, a deeper comprehension of the engine and after-treatment system behavior within the cold start transient and the evaluation of cold start additional emissions for different two-wheelers classes. The study was developed with reference to an European context focusing on Euro 3 motorcycles and Euro 2 mopeds. An experimental investigation on instantaneous speed measurements was carried out with instrumented motorcycles, considering typical urban trips in the city of Genoa. A selection of speed profiles was then performed by processing experimental values.

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.

In this paper some results relative to tests performed on road with a Fiat Panda Bipower, (CNG and gasoline powered), and a New Panda Twin Air with auto Start & Stop system, are presented. Gaseous emissions are measured with Portable Emission Measurement Systems (PEMS) on two different urban routes, in terms of traffic and slope characteristics during in use experiments. PEMS testing offers an easy and efficient way to evaluate the vehicle emissions over a huge variety of conditions and provides us a direct way to study the in-use emissions of combustion engines, when you want to verify the effect of the traffic and of a particular device on fuel economy and emissions reduction. Moreover now PEMS performances are very comparable to those obtained by standard laboratory instrumentation systems.