Impact of diesel/renewable fuels blend on gaseous and particle emissions of a light-duty vehicle under real driving emissions

In this study, the environmental impact of Bio-butanol (BB) and Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) use, each blended with diesel fuel, was investigated. To this aim, pollutant emissions were measured at the exhaust of an Euro 5 commercial light-duty vehicle, fueled with diesel, BB/diesel blend (10 %v BB) and HVO/diesel blend (15 %v HVO). The experimental activity was realized by performing Real Driving Emission (RDE) tests in Napoli (Italy), which allowed to measure total hydrocarbons (THC), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOX), and particle emissions during the real use of vehicle by using a portable emission measurement systems (PEMS). The results show that the differences between fuels are small and not statistically significant for all emission parameters. CO and THC emissions increase with the renewable fuel blends, mainly with the BB blend in the urban environment due to the increasing of cold start contribution. NOX emissions increased with BB (by approximately 4 %) and decreased with the HVO (by approximately 13 %). With both renewable fuel blends, particle emissions at engine output were reduced by 25 %-41 % and fuel consumption by 6 %-10 % compared with diesel.