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A program has been completed to evaluate ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels and passive diesel particulate filters (DPFs) in truck and bus fleets operating in southern California. The fuels, ECD and ECD-1, are produced by ARCO (a BP Company) and have less than 15 ppm sulfur content. Vehicles were retrofitted with two types of catalyzed DPFs, and operated on ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel for over one year. Exhaust emissions, fuel economy and operating cost data were collected for the test vehicles, and compared with baseline control vehicles. Regulated emissions are presented from two rounds of tests. The first round emissions tests were conducted shortly after the vehicles were retrofitted with the DPFs. The second round emissions tests were conducted following approximately one year of operation. Several of the vehicles retrofitted with DPFs accumulated well over 100,000 miles of operation between test rounds.

ARCO has developed diesel fuel called Emission Control Diesel (EC-D) that results in substantially lower exhaust emissions compared to a typical California diesel fuel. EC-D has ultra-low sulfur content, low aromatics, and has a high cetane number. EC-D is produced from typical crude oil using a conventional refining process. Initial engine laboratory tests and vehicle tests indicated that EC-D reduced regulated emissions while maintaining fuel economy, compared to a typical California diesel fuel. Ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels such as EC-D may enable the widespread use of passive catalyzed particulate filters for both new and existing diesel engines. The use of catalyzed particulate filters could allow large reductions of particulate matter emitted from vehicles. A one-year technology validation program is being run to evaluate EC-D and catalyzed particulate filters using diesel vehicles operating in Southern California.

Previous studies have shown that regenerating particulate filters are very effective at reducing particulate matter emissions from diesel engines. Some particulate filters are passive devices that can be installed in place of the muffler on both new and older model diesel engines. These passive devices could potentially be used to retrofit large numbers of trucks and buses already in service, to substantially reduce particulate matter emissions. Catalyst-type particulate filters must be used with diesel fuels having low sulfur content to avoid poisoning the catalyst. A project has been launched to evaluate a truck fleet retrofitted with two types of passive particulate filter systems and operating on diesel fuel having ultra-low sulfur content. The objective of this project is to evaluate new particulate filter and fuel technology in service, using a fleet of twenty Class 8 grocery store trucks. This paper summarizes the truck fleet start-up experience.