Effect of average velocity of passenger cars on national annual emission of pollutants

BEBKIEWICZ, Katarzyna; CHŁOPEK, Zdzisław; SZCZEPAŃSKI, Krystian; ZIMAKOWSKA-LASKOWSKA, Magdalena; Stosio, Grzegorz · 2017 · Crossref

DOI: 10.19206/ce-2017-420

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Summary

This study investigates the sensitivity of national annual pollutant emissions from passenger cars in Poland to average vehicle velocity under three distinct traffic conditions: urban, rural, and highway/expressway. The research was motivated by the critical role of engine operating conditions, particularly velocity, in determining emission levels, and the practical difficulty in selecting accurate average velocity values for emission inventory models due to a lack of systematic empirical data. The authors aimed to quantify how variations in assumed average speeds affect modeled national emissions, thereby assessing the uncertainty inherent in current modeling practices. The analysis utilized the COPERT 4 software, the standard tool for inventorying motor vehicle emissions in the European Union. The simulation was based on the automotive situation in Poland in 2015, incorporating specific data on the number of spark ignition and compression ignition passenger cars, their annual mileage, and the share of road traveled under each traffic condition. The study employed three separate simulation scenarios to isolate the effect of average velocity in urban, rural, and highway settings. In each scenario, the average velocity for the specific traffic condition was varied while holding other parameters constant, allowing for the observation of emission dependencies for pollutants including carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), and carbon dioxide. The results demonstrated that the national annual emission of pollutants is substantially affected by average car velocity, with the nature of this dependence varying significantly by traffic type. For urban traffic, the sensitivity of national annual emissions to average velocity was found to be low, showing minimal variation across the tested speed range. In contrast, rural traffic conditions exhibited the highest sensitivity, with a distinct minimum in national pollutant emission occurring at an average velocity of approximately 70 km/h for most substances. For highway and expressway traffic, national annual emissions generally increased as average velocity increased. The study noted a substantial similarity in the dependence patterns across different pollutants within each traffic category, although rural traffic showed the most pronounced differentiation in emission characteristics. The authors conclude that estimating average velocity values for emission modeling is a significant source of uncertainty, particularly for rural traffic where emissions are most sensitive to speed variations. The findings justify the need for large-scale empirical research programs to reliably identify representative velocity characteristics for passenger car traffic. Accurate determination of these parameters is essential for improving the precision of national pollutant emission inventories and reducing the uncertainty associated with model-based estimates.

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• speed choice