Overview

CE-CERT has been investigating port emissions since 2003, first from locomotives and later drayage vehicles and equipment. More recently the Center has also studied emissions from harbor craft, ferries and ocean-going vessels. Massive port facilities use diesel power to load and unload container ships, as well as to move cargo in and out of the area. The twin Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are among the largest contributors to air pollution in the South Coast Basin. The Emissions and Fuels Research Group has developed some of the earliest comprehensive emissions profiles of different ocean-going vessel engine designs and fuels. The center also was a partner on the first study of lower sulfur marine fuels in the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. EPA and the Mexican Federal Government. Studies have also evaluated hybrid technologies for drayage vehicles and harbor craft.

Research Projects

• Medium and Heavy-Duty EV Deployment - Data Collection

  The number of plug-in and electric vehicle models in the medium-duty (MD) and heavy-duty (HD) category has significantly expanded in recent years. Along with that, a growing number of fleets are deploying or are interested in deploying electric vehicles such as transit buses, school buses, trucks, and off-road equipment. With this rapid growth of electric vehicles in the market, reliable operation and performance data on electric MD and HD vehicles is needed to provide insights on usage and to support the ongoing research into the future deployment. The focus of this project is to collect operations and performance data on MD and HD electric vehicles primarily and much smaller subset of LD electric vehicles. The project will build on deployment efforts underway in several regions across the country that include: a) electric transit buses (transit properties in NY, IL, UT, and CA), b) electric school buses (school districts in NY and CA), c) electric trucks (several large projecs involving truck fleets and goods movement operations in CA), d) electric off-road equipment (ports, goods movement facilities in CA), e) EVs for clean mobility solutions or workplace. The data will be collected using on-board data loggers and established data collection protocols, based on extensive experience of the project team. Several different types of data loggers may be used. CALSTART and CE-CERT have a large number of data loggers that we have been using on vehicle data colleciton projects and that will be available to be used in this project. Other data loggers will may be pre-installed by the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), or provided by a third-party telematics provider as selected by the fleet. We will also seek participation from the OEMs to insure that data can be successfully captured from each vehicle. Data collection test plans and protocols will be standardized, as much as possible, to ensure uniformity across the projects. Data will include: 1) vehicle performance data , 2) charging data from off-board chargers, 3) electricity consumption data, 4) other facility data, and 5) climate data. These data will be collected in addition to vehicle desciption data such as make, model, year, and battery capacity. Data will be collected over a period of at least 12 months from the individual projects and stored centrally in CALSTART’s and/or CE-CERT’s secured data servers. The data will be verified, cleaned, anonymized, and analyzed using clearly defined steps and uniform processes across all vehicles. We will collaborate with colleagues at NREL to inform the definitions of parameters and format of the raw data and ensure alignment with existing database requirements before providing it to the designated Department of Energy natinal lab. Analyses will be peformed to provide summarized results, including tables, charts, and other visuals. All data collected through this project will be made available for download via FTP or similar protocol and accessible only to those who are provided access.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kent Johnson Co-researchers: Dr. Kanok Booriboonsomsin, Dr. Thomas Durbin 

• Optimized Hybrid Ultra-Low NOx Class 8 Heavy Duty Natural Gas Truck

  Gas Technology Institute (GTI) has collaborated with the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), FEV North America, Inc. (FEV), US Hybrid, and Cummins Westport, Inc. (CWI) (the Project Team) to propose the development and demonstration of a fully integrated and optimized natural gas, plug-in, hybrid-electric Class 8 vehicle to meet the objectives of GFO-17-503. The proposed optimization will be applied to an existing plug-in hybrid Class 8 truck platform with an electric drive system, a 40 kWhr lithium ion battery capacity, and a 236 hp electric drive motor. A parallel hybrid configuration will be used to allow the state-of-the-art, near-zero NOx certified, production, CWI L9N engine (i.e. 8.9L engine, certified below 0.02 g/bhp-hr NOx) to drive the truck during cruising for best efficiency. This will also allow the electric motor to supplement the power providing superior acceleration and energy recovery during regenerative braking. In the hybrid mode, the total power will exceed 500 hp, providing performance exceeding that of 12 liter engines, while dramatically reducing emissions and doubling fuel economy. The truck will be able to operate in electric-only (EV-only) mode for zero emission driving, have plug-in charging capability to maximize EV-only range, and utilize engine start-stop technology to minimize idling. Using results from simulation models developed within the first year of the project, advanced controllers for the engine and electrical systems and optimized electrical components will be designed specifically to optimize vehicle performance and drivability for drayage applications. This will minimize emissions and maximize fuel economy. The project is able to achieve these ambitious goals by leveraging extensive research and equipment from past programs (i.e. ARV-11-029 and PIR-13-014). The Project Team is beginning the project with a state-of-the-art, near-zero NOx engine and an operational heavy-duty hybrid vehicle. Thus, it will allow for major advancements from the project to focus on a whole-system approach to controls design ensuring optimization of the balance between the major sub-systems (i.e. engine, hybrid powertrain, and after-treatment) over specific duty cycles. The deliverables include a demonstration of the optimized Class 8 hybrid-electric truck on a chassis dynamometer at UC Riverside allowing for direct comparison to both traditional diesel and natural gas baseline vehicles. The demonstration will quantify emission and performance improvements validated over all of the critical duty-cycles (i.e. Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach drayage cycles, Air Resources Board (ARB) 4-Mode cycle, and the urban dynamometer driving schedule (UDDS)). The project’s primary goal is to develop an efficient energy management platform that controls engine and hybrid energy sources in meeting vehicle propulsion needs. In order to achieve this, the L9N engine stock engine control unit (ECU) will be replaced with a dSPACE rapid prototype controller to enhance the integration with vehicle hybrid controls. Driver demands such as accelerations and power will be split between hybrid powertrain and engine. Furthermore, the hybrid controller will define the maximum electric power delivery based on the state of the battery. Efficient control of torque and power split management between the two propulsion sources will be the key driving factor in developing the control architecture. Class 8, drayage applications are the focus of this project because they operate in the most environmentally sensitive areas of California, produce a significant portion of NOx and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from transportation in the state, and have potential for high impact because of the extreme usage of each vehicle. This proposed project will not only develop and demonstrate an improved natural gas hybrid-electric vehicle; it will also develop and validate tools to facilitate transfer of the know-how for proper integration and optimization of natural gas engines with electric motors and a variety of vehicle drivetrains. This work will advance the current state-of-the art matching and packaging of the natural gas engine and the electric motor/generator/storage components at lower incremental capital cost, with better fuel economy, improved service and drivability while lowering GHG and criteria pollutants.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kent Johnson Co-researcher: Dr. Thomas Durbin

• OSAR: Phase 1 Sensor Evaluation on Heavy Duty Trucks

  Heavy-duty vehicles represent one of the most important contributions to the emissions inventory for both nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) emissions. Heavy-duty engines have been subjected to increasingly more stringent standards over the years. The latest round of standards essentially requiring the use of diesel particulate filters (DPFs) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to meet the PM and NOx emissions standards, respectively. While these aftertreatment systems have provided significant reductions in PM and NOx emissions, it is important to verify that these systems are operating optimally under the full range of in-use conditions to ensure that air quality standards can be met. This is particularly true in the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), where it is projected that mobile source NOx emission levels will need to be reduced significantly to meet the 2023 and 2031 ozone standards. The heavy-duty diesel SCR equipped engine has reduced NOx emissions, by 90%, from previous levels when tested on the certification cycle, but not during in-use operation. Compliant 2010 vehicles were found to have NOx emissions ten times higher than the certification limit on low power test cycles, but meeting the limit on certification like cycles, (Dixit et al, 2017, Misra et al., 2013, Quiros et al., 2017, and Lee et al., 2018). Studies with ultra-low NOx natural gas engines have demonstrated emissions well below the current standard, as much as 100 times lower, even during low power test cycles (Johnson et al 2017 and 2018). Zero emission and hybrid trucks show the ability for zero emissions, but unfortunately their wide spread use is low. A dynamic standard, such as a zero emissions or ultra-low NOx zone, could be utilized which would encourage different technologies in urban areas where in-use NOx emissions are much higher than the standards. The Air Resource Board is proposing a low-NOx standard of 0.02 g/bhp-hr, a low power test cycle, and revisions to the Not-To-Exceed compliance test to try and close the gap between certification and in-use. A different solution is to measure all the trucks all the time with on board sensing and validate compliance from the in-use fleet under the conditions where they produce emissions. It is suggested, that there will always be a gap between our standards (policy) and the in-use emissions (real exposure) until we focus on the in-use for our compliance and certification methods. Agencies, industry and academia are in agreement that “in-use” is where we need to focus, so it is time to start thinking this way in our standards. Complying with in-use conditions will be a challenge and will require a change from laboratory or portable emissions measurement system (PEMS) testing to an on-board continuous measurement and reporting system. The system proposed here is called Onboard Sensing, Analysis, and Reporting (OSAR). OSAR utilizes sensors technology that is borrowed from the vehicles embedded control system. These control sensors have been studied and are relatively accurate, repeatable, and very durable. Tan et al., (2018) evaluated the in-use NOx emission rates from the on-board diagnostic (OBD) sensors of 72 HDDVs. They found that high NOx emissions were still a common problem in from in-use heavy-duty diesel fleets, primarily due to low SCR conversion efficiencies during low temperature operation and potentially from malfunctioning SCRs. Montes (2018) compared these same OBD sensors with the laboratory and found that the sensors on average were with-in 15% (with a range from -5% to +50%) of the laboratory measurement. The laboratory NOx emissions ranged from 2.5 to 0.046 g/bhp-hr and the OBD NOx sensor emissions ranged from 2.6 to 0.061 g/bhp-hr. The wide range of data between vehicles is significantly more important than the slight difference between the measurements. One significant concern with the OBD NOx sensor is that they are disabled below 250 C to prevent humidity damage to the ceramic sensing element. NGK-sparkplugs, a large manufacturer of OBD NOx sensors, developed prototypes that operate at lower conditions than the OBD sensors and also improved their accuracy. The low temperature conditions are important because this is where the highest NOx emissions are generated for SCR equipped diesel engines. Yang et al. (2018) utilized this prototype sensor and found NOx measurements were within approximately ±10% of those the full 1065 compliance PEMS system over a range of driving conditions and emissions sources from 15 g/bhp-hr to 0.2 g/bhp-hr including cold start conditions. The overall goal of this research is to create an on-board reporting system to guide the industry into a sustainable path of emissions control for their vehicles using the real world as the design platform. The funds provided by AQMD will leverage larger dollars from industry as we demonstrate and consider in-use design methods for regulations. It is believed this seed funding will spur the industry into a solution that includes instrumenting all new heavy-duty trucks with ideas for retrofitting older ones depending on feedback from the Agencies. Also it is believed this proposal will be supported by the industry and fleets owners as it benefits everyone with a fair and practical solution for emissions regulations. Eventually other mobile sources will follow this patter including non-road and light duty passenger cars. The goal of this Phase 1 research proposal is to develop and demonstrate a low cost NOx and PM sensor-based emissions measurement designed for heavy duty engines. The low cost system would be designed to include future capabilities such as dynamic engine calibration control, in-use policy enforcement with a fine based method, and a data driven exposure model specific to the South Coast Air Basin.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kent Johnson Co-researcher: Dr. Thomas Durbin

• Advanced Off-Road NG Vehicle Demonstration and Evaluation

  This proposal is in response to the California Energy Commission research for advanced transportation technologies with renewable energy (AB118/8) that innovate a wide range of efficiency of engines with advanced emission control and aftertreatment technologies to enable or exceed current Tier 4 emission standards. UCR is teaming with Gradstein and Associates for a comprehensive approach and evaluation of NG technologies as they relate to off-road applications. The project will test the emission and operational performance of natural gas and RNG fueled yard hostlers alongside various yard hostler technologies, including electric and (Tier 4 final) diesel. The natural gas hostlers will be powered by 9 liter NZ engines (already funded) and 6.7 liter 0.1g NOx engines. The project will test fossil natural gas and various blends and sources of renewable natural gas, brought to the site from physical RNG production plants in both LNG and CNG form. To use CNG on the yard hostlers, CNG fuel systems will be required to be fitted on some of the hostlers. The fuel gas sensor will be integrated into an engine to measure gas quality (and make engine adjustments). Well-to-wheel analysis can be considered or the various fuel pathways. The existing funding of the 20 LNG yard hostlers will allow for significantly more extensive testing via this CEC PON award as the funds do not have to be spent on expensive hardware. 

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kent Johnson Co-researcher: Dr. Chan Seung Park

• Off-road Equipment data monitoring

  The University of California at Riverside will provide support for data logging and potentially portable emissions measurement systems (PEMS) testing of off-road equipment. This will be conducted in support of the Port of Long Beach’s (POLB) prime contract effort with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to fund 2 battery-electric top handlers (Taylor/BYD) at the SSA terminal, and 1 battery-electric top handler, 1 battery-electric yard hostler (Kalmar/TransPower), and 1 fuel-cell yard hostler (CNHTC/LOOP Energy) at the LBCT terminal. In conjunction with these advanced technology equipment, one diesel top handler at LBCT, one diesel top handler at SSA Marine, and one diesel yard truck at LBCT will also be monitored.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kent Johnson Co-researchers: Dr. Kanok Booriboonsomsin, Dr. Thomas Durbin

• Technologies to reduce emissions associated with freight movement

  The objective of this project is to test the emissions of existing and promising technologies that offer the potential for further reductions in the emissions associated with freight movement at the ports. Testing would provide direct measurements of the in-use emissions of criteria pollutants (CO, NOx, PM2.5, THC), long-lived climate pollutants (CO2), short-lived climate pollutants (black carbon, methane) and air toxics, as needed. The sources of primary interest include scrubbers, LNG vessels, as well as, the use of non-distillate fuels on ocean-going vessels (OGVs) and the engines associated with cargo handling equipment (CHE), and/or commercial harbor craft (CHC). While there are many available technologies to focus on that have been successful in reducing criteria pollutants such as PM, SOx and NOx, further reductions are needed to help achieve California’s air quality, climate, and public health mandates. In particular, additional efforts need to be directed towards the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG), including short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), from the freight movement system.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kent Johnson Co-researcher: Dr. Wayne Miller

• 200 Vehicle Study

  UC Riverside is a leading research institute in the area of over the road/real-world vehicle testing. Over the past 5 years, UC Riverside has played a central role in the validation of portable emissions measurement systems (PEMS) systems for use in EPA’s in-use testing program of heavy-duty vehicles thought the Measurement Allowance Program. As part of this program, UC Riverside conducted in the in-use testing validation portion of this program utilizing UC Riverside’s Mobile Emissions Laboratory (MEL). The MEL is a full dilution system equipped in a 53’ trailer that is 1065 compliant and was cross correlated twice with Southwest Research Institute as part of the Measurement Allowance program. The in-use evaluations and validation played in critical role in developing the Measurement Allowance values for both gas-phase and PM PEMS. 

  UC Riverside has also been a leading research institute in the characterization of in-use emissions using PEMS and the MEL. This has included measurements of light-duty vehicles, heavy-duty vehicles, construction equipment, ships, port support equipment, trains, and even jet aircraft. As part of these studies, UC Riverside has construction some of the most comprehensive PEMs systems. This includes a PEMS system based around the AVL microsoot sensor (MSS) with either an AVL or Sensor Inc. gas-phase PEMS. The AVL MSS was the best performing instrument for in-use PM measurements in EPAs Measurement Allowance program. We have utilized this system installed on construction equipment as part of program for CARB and Caltrans, as well as for on-road truck testing as part of the Measurement Allowance and other programs. UC Riverside has a separate PEMS system based on a Horiba PG350 portable multi-gas analyzer for steady state measurements in compliance with ISO 8178. This PEMS system has been utilized for testing on ships, of generators, and port support equipment. UC Riverside has developed protocols for technology verifications of emission control technologies for such applications as generators, marine vessels, and rubber tire gantry cranes. 

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Thomas Durbin 

• SOA Forming Potential from HD Diesel Vehicles and HD Natural Gas Vehicles

  This program will investigate the physical and chemical composition of secondary emissions from 2 natural gas trucks and 2 modern technology diesel trucks over realistic driving conditions. The proposed study will complement the major 200 vehicle program funded by SCAQMD. Primary organic aerosol (POA) will be measured for all heavy-duty vehicles over different driving cycle using a chassis dynamometer. The primary emissions testing using CE-CERT’s Mobile Emissions Lab (MEL) and heavy-duty chassis dynamometer will be covered under the base SCAQMD program. Emission measurements will include regulated pollutants, PM mass, total particle number, solid particle number in accordance to the PMP protocol, black carbon, and particle size distributions, as well as carbonyl compounds. For each vehicle, the exhaust will be collected in CE-CERT’s mobile chamber and subsequently photochemically aged. This proposal will expand on SCAQMD’s funding for evaluating in-use emissions from current technology natural gas and diesel trucks and for evaluating secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from GDI vehicles, including ethanol fueled GDI vehicles. The proposed work will use the mobile environmental chamber with on-line gas and particle phase instrumentation to include detailed physical and chemical characterization of primary and secondary aerosol (e.g., POA and SOA) from heavy-duty vehicles. There are three novel aspects for this program: (1) characterizing current generation heavy-duty vehicles, since most previous studies have focused on light-duty vehicles/engines, and (2) characterizing the SOA forming potential from natural gas trucks. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first study looking at the impacts of natural gas heavy-duty vehicles on SOA formation and ultimately their impact in air quality. Characterizing aerosols from heavy-duty diesel and natural gas vehicles is an important step in understanding air quality in our region. Heavy-duty trucks are important sources of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs), NOx, CO, and particulate matter (PM) that represent a significant contribution to SOA and ozone formation in the atmosphere. Secondary organic aerosol formed from atmospheric reactions of volatile and semi-organic compounds in the presence of NOx constitutes an important component of suspended fine atmospheric particulate matter that impacts visibility, climate, and health. Studies have shown that in California diesel emissions from heavy-duty vehicles contribute to primary organic aerosol (POA), but not detectably to SOA, while gasoline vehicles are the main source of SOA formation (Bahreini et al., 2012). However, there is a gap in the literature about the actual effects of primarily natural gas heavy-duty vehicles and diesel trucks.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Georgios Karavalakis Co-researcher: Dr. David Cocker 

• Pollutant Emission Rates from Maritime Sources

  The task includes quantifying real-world emissions from individual CHC operating in California. Previously, CARB staff has assumed real-world emissions follow the measurements recorded during the engine certification cycle; however, DPM and NOx emitted from CHC may be higher in the real world than during certification even when accounting for expected deterioration of emission control systems. A Portable Emissions Measurement System (PEMS) will be used to characterize emissions from three (3) CHC vessels for CARB’s inventory modeling. In an effort to choose the most appropriate vessels to characterize in more detail using PEMS, UCR will work with CARB staff to choose vessels based on emission factor data from the pool of vessels characterized using remote sensing methods done by other team members with separate budgets. UCR will measure DPM and NOx emissions over transient operation conditions over 2 consecutive weeks for three CHC vessels. UCR will analyze the data and report the result to ARB and the team. This project includes UCB, USC and UCR. UCB is a leading institution (and others are subcontractors) for contract purpose and each institution has a separate SOW. The above is SOW for UCR.

  Lead Researcher: Dr. Heejung Jung