AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Spark-Plug Sized Automotive Exhaust Aerosol Sensors for Emission Monitoring and On-Board Diagnostics
VINAY PREMNATH, Imad Abdul-Khalek, Southwest Research Institute
Abstract Number: 287 Working Group: Air Quality Sensors: Low-cost != Low Complexity
Abstract The California Air Resources Board has instituted requirements for on-board diagnostics (OBD) that make spark-plug sized particulate matter (PM) sensors critical components of vehicle exhaust aftertreatment systems. These sensors are typically used on diesel engine platforms to monitor health of diesel particle filters. While these sensors are currently utilized for OBD, there is tremendous interest globally among regulators and engine manufacturers to use such sensors for emission monitoring wherein real-time sensor signal would be broadcast to the cloud. Such a large database would assist regulators, air quality, climate and health researchers.
Prior to being widely adopted, in-depth knowledge of the performance of such sensors is important. This work reviews the state-of-the-art in automotive exhaust aerosol sensing and discusses the experimental evaluation of these technologies. Experimental results from two campaigns will be discussed. The first campaign focused on evaluating performance of real-time and accumulation-type sensors as a function of exhaust PM concentration, size distribution, velocity and temperature. A 1998 model year (MY) heavy-duty diesel engine was used. The second campaign involved evaluation of a real-time sensing technology using a 2011 MY heavy-duty diesel engine equipped with a complete aftertreatment package. Sensors were tested under both, steady-state as well as transient engine operating conditions. During both campaigns, aerosol sensors were benchmarked against real-time laboratory instrumentation. AVL micro-soot sensor was used for soot mass measurement and TSI engine exhaust particle sizer coupled with SwRI’s solid particle sampling system was used for solid particle number and size measurement. Accuracy, variability and lower detection capability of sensors were examined.
This work sheds some light on the state of automotive exhaust aerosol sensing and outlines some steps required to develop a reliable sensing technology that can be used for emission monitoring.