Ricardo Energy & Environment launches real-world vehicle emissions monitoring service with individual vehicle identification in the UK
20 March 2017
In the UK, increasing pressure to reduce the impact of pollution from vehicles has led to growing interest in the introduction of Clean Air Zones and Low Emission Zones. However, such mitigation measures are expensive to design and implement and, while street level air quality monitoring can highlight the problem in the form of the local hot spots at which exceedances occur, it does not provide information on which of the passing vehicles are the most polluting.
To address this need, Ricardo Energy & Environment, working with technology partner OPUS Inspection, has launched a real-world vehicle emissions monitoring service. The accurate measurement of the emissions of passing vehicles is linked to automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras for individual vehicle identification.
Installed at locations of interest, the measurement system instantaneously records in a completely non-intrusive manner, the real-world driving emissions—of NOx particulate matter, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and ammonia—from each passing vehicle.
The data recorded can be used to identify the most polluting vehicle types (i.e. buses, heavy goods vehicles, vans and cars) and their respective contributions to emissions.
Significant improvements are thus possible in the accuracy of modeling and simulation efforts underpinning the design of Clean Air Zones, reducing uncertainty by replacing assumptions with evidence-based, real-world driving emissions information. Moreover, once such zones have been implemented, the system can be used to support enforcement management through the identification of non-compliant vehicles.
Ricardo’s new vehicle emission measurement service is a major step forward in the measurement of real-world vehicle emissions in the UK, helping our clients to improve the design, enforceability and overall effectiveness of Clean Air and Low Emissions Zones. The capability that this new system gives us complements the extensive air quality capabilities that Ricardo offers, ranging from support and advice on pollution control policies, pollution modelling and measurements, inventory design and compilation and the development of low emission strategies.
—Sean Christiansen, Ricardo Energy & Environment air quality practice director
Every city needs to use these to fine and block registration for gross polluters, usually selfish truck and motorcycles with no exhaust.
Posted by: TeslaRedux.co | 20 March 2017 at 09:22 AM
The first thing many Harley riders do with a new motorcycle is remove the factory muffler and have an illegal open exhaust installed so they can hear the'rolling thunder'...wow! The police let 'em all skate and pollute.
Posted by: Lad | 20 March 2017 at 10:02 AM
I never saw a more moronic green car website as green car report where they remove half of my posts and they plainly say to not challenge in any way the climate change consensus scam. LOL.
Posted by: gorr | 20 March 2017 at 05:29 PM
@gorr
Thanks for the tip, I've added GreenCarReports to my bookmarks.
Nice to know the site won't be deluged by evidence-free comments.
Posted by: Thomas Lankester | 21 March 2017 at 05:58 AM