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Roadside emissions sensing instrument on the way

A Sira product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jul 10, 2001

Remote Measurement of Vehicle Emissions at Low Cost is a European research project set up to develop a novel roadside sensing instrument for checking emissions from moving traffic.

European citizens want to enjoy good air quality but they also like the benefits brought by road transport.

These conflicting objectives can be helped by identifying pollution hot-spots in our towns and cities and by keeping road vehicles well maintained.

With this aim, a European research project has been set up to develop a novel roadside sensing instrument for checking emissions from moving traffic.

The Reveal* (Remote Measurement of Vehicle Emissions at Low Cost) project is being coordinated by Sira, and has been approved under the European Commission's Framework 5 Competitive and Sustainable Growth Programme.

Remote sensing at the roadside will be useful for measuring vehicle emissions under real operating conditions.

For example, drivers would be able to discover the environmental performance of their vehicle as they pass a measurement post on a filling station forecourt.

It would also enable grossly polluting vehicles to be identified, localised pollution levels to be monitored, and the effects of curbs on emissions to be assessed.

Levels could be set for legally permitted emissions based on realistic operating parameters.

The project was put together in response to user needs and the market opportunities identified within Sira's Collaborations for Success programme, which stimulates innovative collaboration in the field of sensors, instrumentation and measurement.

It resulted in the pooling of expertise in the modelling and measurement of emissions and instrument development, with ten partners from seven European countries.

Sira's Programme Manager, Dr Andrew Crookell, commented: "By bringing together this invaluable international expertise, we have taken a direct step towards reducing vehicle pollution, improving the quality of life for European citizens and developing new areas of instrumentation manufacture and supporting services." The new sensor will be based on a novel spectrometer design, making full use of recent advances in source and detector technology to produce a more flexible instrument, which will be able to measure a range of different pollutants with greater accuracy, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and unburnt hydrocarbons such as benzene.

In the short term, the 2.7 million euro project will develop and validate the prototype instrumentation and contribute to a database of pollution data that will help future research on emission management.

In the medium term, it is expected that both the instrument and a spectrometer subsystem will be produced commercially.

There are also plans to use a version of the instrument as part of an environmental awareness programme to encourage drivers to be aware of their vehicle emissions and to take greater responsibility for them.