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JRC releases final report from EU PEMS PM program

22 July 2015

The EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) released the final report from the EU-PEMS PM Pilot Program, conducted to test if the available PEMS PM mass instruments fulfill the requirements to be used as part of the PEMS procedure for heavy-duty vehicles within the Euro VI legislation. The completion of the program is one of the last steps before PEMS PM testing requirements can be introduced for the determination of in-service conformity (ISC) with the Euro VI emission standards.

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The main objective of the PEMS program was to understand the capability of the different instruments to measure the PM mass, and to recommend a practical test procedure. The report presents the findings of the PEMS PM Pre-Pilot and Pilot programs. It also provides recommendations on the possible procedure to perform PEMS PM measurements.

The PEMS PM Pre-Pilot program used an IVECO Eurocargo© diesel vehicle (Euro IV with SCR), which was equipped with four different PEMS PM instruments: (1) AVL MOVE PEMS PM (AVL-MOVE/MSS), (2) Control Sistem PEMS PM (CS-PSS), (3) Horiba TPRM (HOR/OBS) and (4) Sensors Semtech Ecostar (ECO). One gaseous PEMS instrument was also used—the Semtech DS. The procedure followed in the Pre-pilot program was to test the vehicle at laboratory conditions (VELA laboratory), both in the test cell and using the PEMS PM instruments, then run a series of on-road tests.

The PEMS PM Pilot program was conducted using a number of Euro VI trucks and PEMS PM instruments, tested at different testing conditions in several locations in Europe. The program was aided by the manufacturers of the different participating instruments. In the report, both vehicles and PEMS test instrumentation have been rendered anonymous, in order to have “a fair analysis and result discussion”.

The conclusions of the report are:

  1. PEMS PM measurement instruments are ready and available to measure PM mass using the mass collected in the filter and a real-time signal method. Therefore, they are suitable to be used as part of the PEMS procedure.
  2. The PEMS PM analysis procedure can follow the procedure performed to analyze the gaseous pollutants.
  3. As in the gaseous emissions, significant amount of PM mass may be excluded by applying current PEMS testing boundary conditions.
  4. Regeneration is able to be detected by the PEMS PM instrumentation, however, solutions need to be discussed further on the possibility to be able to proceed with the analysis of trips with regeneration events.

Source: JRC