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Ultrafine particles, in particular solid sub-100 nm particles pose high risks to human health due to their high lung deposition efficiency, translocation to all organs including the brain and their harmful chemical composition; due to dense traffic, the population in urban environments is exposed to high concentrations of those toxic air contaminants, despite these facts, they are still widely neglected. Therefore, the EU-Commission set up a program for clean and competitive solutions for different problem areas which are regarded to be hotspots of such particles. HORIZON AeroSolfd is an EU project, co-funded by Switzerland that will deliver affordable, adaptable, and sustainable retrofit solutions to reduce exhaust tailpipe emissions from petrol engines, brake emissions and pollution in semi-closed environments.

Environmental authorities such as EPA, VCA have enforced stringent emissions legislation governing air pollutants released into the atmosphere. Of particular interest is the challenge introduced by the limit on particulate number (PN) counting (#/km) and real driving emissions (RDE) testing; with new emissions legislation being shortly introduced for the gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines, gasoline particulate filters (GPF) are considered the most immediate solution. While engine calibration and testing over the Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC) allow for the limits to be met, real driving emission and cold start constitute a real challenge. The present work focuses on an experimental durability study on road under real world driving conditions. Two sets of experiments were carried out. The first study analyzed a gasoline particulate filter (GPF) (2.4 liter, diameter 5.2” round) installed in the underfloor (UF) position and driven up to 200k km.

With the increased use of engines utilizing direct fuel injection and the upcoming introduction of more stringent emissions legislation that regulates not only particulate mass (PM) but also particulate number (PN), the emissions from Direct Injection Spark Ignition Engines (DISI) are an increasing concern. Gasoline Particle Filters (GPF) represent a potential way to reduce particle number emissions from DISI engines and are particularly effective considering the tough performance requirements during cold start and over RDE operation. Even though some learning from the development and application of particulate filters to diesel engines can be transferred to gasoline engines, the particle composition, mass to number ratio as well as the exhaust gas temperature and composition from gasoline engines are significantly different to diesel engines. Therefore, there is the need to study the application of particulate filters to gasoline engines in more depth.