Real World Vehicle Emission Factors for Black Carbon Derived from Longterm In-Situ Measurements and Inverse Modelling

Abstract

Black carbon (BC) is one of the most harmful substances within traffic emissions, contributing considerably to urban pollution. Nevertheless, it is not explicitly regulated and the official laboratory derived emission factors are barely consistent with real world emissions. However, realistic emission factors (EFs) are crucial for emission, exposure, and climate modelling. A unique dataset of 10 years (2009–2018) of roadside and background measurements of equivalent black carbon (eBC) concentration made it possible to estimate real world traffic EFs and observe their change over time. The pollutant dispersion was modelled using the Operational Street Pollution Model (OSPM). The EFs for eBC are derived for this specific measurement site in a narrow but densely trafficked street canyon in Leipzig, Germany. The local conditions and fleet composition can be considered as typical for an inner-city traffic scenario in a Western European city. The fleet is composed of 22% diesel and 77% petrol cars in the passenger car segment, with an unknown proportion of direct injection engines. For the mixed fleet the eBC EF was found to be 48 mg km−1 in the long-term average. Accelerated by the introduction of a low emission zone, the EFs decreased over the available time period from around 70 mg km−1 to 30 – 40 mg km−1 . Segregation into light (<3.5 t) and heavy (>3.5 t) vehicles resulted in slightly lower estimates for the light vehicles than for the mixed fleet, and one order of magnitude higher values for the heavy vehicles. The found values are considerably higher than comparable emission standards for particulate matter and even the calculations of the Handbook Emission Factors for Road Transport (HBEFA), which is often used as emission model input. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.