Large decrease of VOC emissions of Switzerland's car fleet during the past decade: results from a highway tunnel study

The emissions of 14 C4-C8 VOC species from road traffic have been measured in a highway tunnel (Gubristtunnel) near Zurich, Switzerland in 2002. The investigated traffic situation corresponds to highway driving with an average speed of 90 km h−1 and hot engine conditions. The comparison with measurements in the same tunnel performed in 1993 indicates that the emission factors of the individual hydrocarbons decreased on average by 80% in the 9 years between both investigations. This improvement can mainly be explained by the nearly complete elimination of non-catalyst gasoline-fuelled cars from the Swiss car fleet in the past decade. The relative emission strengths of the quantified individual VOCs were similar in 1993 and 2002. The emission factors reported in this study are the lowest reported from on-road vehicle emission measurements so far, indicating the efficient technology of modern car fleets with respect to VOC emissions. The emission factors derived from the tunnel study are compared to modelled emission factors based on dynamometric test measurements on Swiss passenger cars. The employed model is the Handbuch für Emissionsfaktoren des Strassenverkehrs; version 1.2 (Umweltbundesamt Berlin and INFRAS AG Bern, 1999). A good agreement between the modelled and measured emissions was found for the investigated traffic situation, indicating that the development of the VOC emissions during the last decade is well understood on the basis of the fleet composition and the dynamometric test measurements. The observed VOC emission reduction corresponds to a traffic situation, where an optimal exhaust gas catalyst performance can be expected. Factors leading to a somewhat less beneficial influence of the catalytic converter technique in other relevant driving situations are therefore additionally discussed.