On-road heavy-duty diesel vehicles are a major contributor of oxides of nitrogen (NO) emissions. In the US, many heavy-duty diesel vehicles employ selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to meet the 2010 emission standard for NO. Typically, SCR needs to be at least 200°C before a significant level of NO reduction is achieved. However, this SCR temperature requirement may not be met under some real-world operating conditions, such as during cold starts, long idling, or low speed/low engine load driving activities. The frequency of vehicle operation with low SCR temperature varies partly by the vehicle's vocational use. In this study, detailed vehicle and engine activity data were collected from 90 heavy-duty vehicles involved in a range of vocations, including line haul, drayage, construction, agricultural, food distribution, beverage distribution, refuse, public work, and utility repair. The data were used to create real-world SCR temperature and engine load profiles and identify the fraction of vehicle operating time that SCR may not be as effective for NO control. It is found that the vehicles participated in this study operate with SCR temperature lower than 200°C for 11-70% of the time depending on their vocation type. This implies that real-world NO control efficiency could deviate from the control efficiency observed during engine certification.

The contribution of lubricating oil to particulate matter (PM) emissions representative of the in-use 2004 light-duty gasoline vehicles fleet is estimated from the Kansas City Light-Duty Vehicle Emissions Study (KCVES). PM emissions are apportioned to lubricating oil and gasoline using aerosol-phase chemical markers measured in PM samples obtained from 99 vehicles tested on the California Unified Driving Cycle. The oil contribution to fleet-weighted PM emission rates is estimated to be 25% of PM emission rates. Oil contributes primarily to the organic fraction of PM, with no detectable contribution to elemental carbon emissions. Vehicles are analyzed according to pre-1991 and 1991-2004 groups due to differences in properties of the fitting species between newer and older vehicles, and to account for the sampling design of the study. Pre-1991 vehicles contribute 13.5% of the KC vehicle population, 70% of oil-derived PM for the entire fleet, and 33% of the fuel-derived PM. The uncertainty of the contributions is calculated from a survey analysis resampling method, with 95% confidence intervals for the oil-derived PM fraction ranging from 13% to 37%. The PM is not completely apportioned to the gasoline and oil due to several contributing factors, including varied chemical composition of PM among vehicles, metal emissions, and PM measurement artifacts. Additional uncertainties include potential sorption of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into the oil, contributions of semivolatile organic compounds from the oil to the PM measurements, and representing the in-use fleet with a limited number of vehicles.

The Kansas City Light-Duty Vehicle Emissions Study (KCVES) measured exhaust emissions of regulated and unregulated pollutants from 496 vehicles recruited in the Kansas City metropolitan area in 2004 and 2005. Vehicle emissions testing occurred during the summer and winter, with the vehicles operated at ambient temperatures. One key component of this study was the investigation of the influence of ambient temperature on particulate matter (PM) emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles. A subset of the recruited vehicles were tested in both the summer and winter to further elucidate the effects of temperature on vehicle tailpipe emissions. The study results indicated that PM emissions increased exponentially as temperature decreased. In general, PM emissions doubled for every 20 degrees F drop in ambient temperature, with these increases independent of vehicle model year. The effects of temperature on vehicle emissions was most pronounced during the initial start-up of the vehicle (cold start phase) when the vehicle was still cold, leading to inefficient combustion, inefficient catalyst operation, and the potential for the vehicle to be operating under fuel-rich conditions. The large data set available from this study also allowed for the development of a model to describe temperature effects on PM emission rates due to changing ambient conditions. This study has been used as the foundation to develop PM emissions rates, and to model the impact of ambient temperature on these rates, for gasoline-powered vehicles in the EPA's new regulatory motor vehicle emissions model, MOVES.

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