Reproducibility of the 10-nm Solid Particle Number Methodology for Light-Duty Vehicles Exhaust Measurements

Many countries worldwide have introduced a limit for solid particles larger than 23 nm for the type approval of vehicles before their circulation in the market. However, for some vehicles, in particular for port fuel injection engines (gasoline and gas engines) a high fraction of particles resides below 23 nm. For this reason, a methodology for counting solid particles larger than 10 nm was developed in the Particle Measurement Programme (PMP) group of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). There are no studies assessing the reproducibility of the new methodology across different laboratories. In this study we compared the reproducibility of the new 10 nm methodology to the current 23 nm methodology. A light-duty gasoline direct injection vehicle and two reference solid particle number measurement systems were circulated in seven European and two Asian laboratories which were also measuring with their own systems fulfilling the current 23 nm methodology. The hot and cold start emission of the vehicle covered a range of 1 to 15 x 10(12) #/km with the ratio of sub-23 nm particles to the >23 nm emissions being 10-50%. In most cases the differences between the three measurement systems were +/- 10%. In general, the reproducibility of the new methodology was at the same levels (around 14%) as with the current methodology (on average 17%).