Sensitive analysis of emission rates in MOVES for developing site-specific emission database

With the rapid social and economic development, vehicle emissions have been identified as a major source of urban air pollutions in China. Therefore, the study on vehicle emission estimations is necessary. In light of the limitation of emission data for establishing a local comprehensive emission database, this paper analyzes the characteristics of emission rates in MOVES released by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to investigate the feasibility and to design a method for developing site-specific emission database. Sensitive analysis for model year, age group and speed interval is performed, and the regularity is concluded. The result shows that emission rates are almost constant with model year, but increase with age groups because of emission deterioration. With respect to speed intervals, the emission rates in 25-50 mph are higher than both those <25 mph and >50 mph in the same VSP (vehicle specific power) bins. In addition, an analysis of local emission data in Beijing is conducted to build the relationship between vehicle activities and emission rates. After that, a comparison of emission rates by VSP bins in MOVES and in local database is conducted in this study. The result shows that the absolute values are different because of regulatory emission standards, fuel quality, and other factors. However, the relative changes described by normalizing emission rates have a good consistency. Hence, the regularities of emission rates by VSP bins in MOVES can be used to develop local emission database in Beijing.