01475668

Component

The MOBILE series emission factor models are replaced by Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) in 2012 as an official tool recommended by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to predict vehicular pollutant emission factors. In this study, on-road vehicle emission inventories of CO and NOx for Southeast Texas generated by MOVES and MOBILE in two versions of the 2005 National Emission Inventory (NEI) are studied by comparing predicted CO, NOx and CO/NOx ratios with measurements using the EPA’s Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Model incorporated with a source-oriented gas phase chemical mechanism. This source tracing technique allows direct determination of contributions from gasoline and diesel vehicles to CO and NOx concentrations and identification of stations which are impacted by vehicle emissions. At three vehicle-emission influenced stations, MOVES estimates higher NOx and relatively similar CO compared to MOBILE6.2 (version 6.2 of the MOBILE model). Results indicate that MOVES overestimates NOx by 50% compared to 6% based on MOBILE emissions. Even though MOVES does a slightly better job in predicting CO/NOx ratios than MOBILE6.2, this difference is primarily due to inaccurately increasing NOx rather than decreasing CO emissions. This study suggests that the current version of the MOVES model should be improved to reduce NOx to the levels slightly below MOBILE predictions and significantly reduce CO emissions.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC20 Transportation and Air Quality.

01470560

13-5187

English

13p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Carbon monoxide; Computer models; Exhaust gases; Mathematical prediction; Nitrogen oxides

Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model; MOBILE6.2 (Computer model); Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES)

Texas

Environment; Highways; I15: Environment

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-5187

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:59PM