Substantial amount of pollutants is emitted during the vehicle start-up, since the engine has not reached its optimal operating temperature.
In urban traffic environment, the engine emissions during its warming up until it reaches a hot stabilized mode are an important source of major air pollutants.
Existing literature indicates that:
- in recent years the vehicle emissions have been reduced significantly, while those related to engine cold starts still remain high;
- emission levels during engine start-up are deeply influenced by the vehicle characteristics.
Most of studies are related to diesel engines equipped with high efficiency DPFs, gasoline port fuel injected and gasoline direct injected engines equipped with three-way-catalysts.
This paper aims at characterizing pollutants and solid particles emissions from a low displacement two cylinder diesel engine, whose main application is in city cars and urban vehicles. During tests, measurements started at the time of the engine cold start-up; transient conditions of load and speed were imposed to the engine. A characterization of solid particle was performed, in terms of particle number and size distribution for three engine thermal conditions: cold, warm and hot starts.