On-road vehicular emission characterization from the road-tunnel measurements in India: Morphology, emission factors, and sources

In India, there is very limited data on vehicular emission characterization in real-world driving conditions and the contribution of non-exhaust vehicular emissions to ambient particulate matter (PM) is still unanswered. Furthermore, there are no real-world emission factors (EFs) for the PM constituents. Thus, this study aims to characterize the trace elements and metals, and black carbon (BC) in PM2.5 and PM10 from the light-duty vehicles (LDVs) and mixed vehicular fleet with significant contribution of heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) through road -tunnel measurements. Real-world EFs were estimated for the measured PM chemical constituents. Further, source apportionment was carried out to find the plausible sources and their contribution to total PM2.5 and PM10 road traffic emissions. Air pollutant and traffic measurements were conducted at two roadway tunnels: Eastern Freeway tunnel (FT; only LDVs) and Kamshet-I tunnel (KT; 80% LDVs & 20% HDVs) in Mumbai, India covering both peak and off-peak traffic hours. Major elements (Al, Ca, Fe, K, Mg, and Na) constitute 90-93% of total measured elemental concentrations in both PM2.5 and PM10 road traffic emissions. Overall, the elemental con-centrations were higher for the HDV-dominant fleet than the LDV-fleet for both PM2.5 and PM10. Similarly, BC was higher for the HDV-dominant fleet which is corroborated by the morphological analysis. The measured BC, trace elements and metals EFs in this study were higher than those reported than previous road tunnel studies with similar vehicle composition indicating the presence of high-emitting vehicles in this study. The dominant proportion of PM2.5 road traffic emissions was from the tailpipe (52%) followed by brake wear (30%) and vehicular driven resuspended road dust (18%). Whilst, resuspended road dust (63%) was identified as the major source of PM10 traffic emissions followed by vehicular exhaust (28%) and brake wear (9%). With the potential increase in the share of electric and hybrid vehicles in the vehicular fleet, the relative contribution of non-exhaust emissions to the airborne PM will be more significant. Hence, there is an imminent need to regulate non-exhaust vehicular emissions.

Automated summary

There is limited data on vehicular emission characterization and the contribution of non-exhaust vehicular emissions to ambient particulate matter in real-world driving conditions in India. This study aims to analyze the trace elements, metals, and black carbon in PM2.5 and PM10 from light-duty vehicles (LDVs) and mixed vehicular fleet with heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) through road tunnel measurements. Real-world emission factors (EFs) were estimated, and source apportionment was conducted to identify the plausible sources of road traffic emissions. The study highlights the need to regulate non-exhaust vehicular emissions.