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Six European vehicles fitted with carbon canisters have been tested under severe conditions to establish if evaporative losses of volatile organic compounds occur under European driving conditions - so-called “running losses”. The programme entailed the development of a point source measurement technique which has a number of advantages over other methods currently in use. Following the development and validation of the measurement technique, the six vehicles were tested at 28C over a range of driving cycles on a gasoline with a Reid vapour pressure of 90 kPa. None of the vehicles exhibited classical running losses, i.e. losses during higher-speed driving. This was due to the effectiveness of canister purging in these conditions. However, significant volatile organic compound (VOC) losses were observed for several vehicles during idle after a period of driving had heated the fuel. Substantial car-to-car variation was observed in the losses obtained.

Studies using a bi-fuelled (autogas/gasoline) Renault Laguna vehicle meeting °the 1996 European exhaust emission legislation has demonstrated that over the European test cycle at 25°C the LPG operated vehicle provides substantial benefits of reduced emissions compared to unleaded reference gasoline. At lower test temperatures (i.e. 5°C) even larger reduction in emissions have been observed. Lower CO (up to 95% at -5°C and 65% at 25°C), HC (90% at -5°C and 40% at 25°C) emissions and lower ozone HC reactivity have been observed and could all offer significant environmental air-quality benefits for LPG. Various autogas mixtures have been tested including 70/30, 30/70 and 49/30/21 (% mass propane / butane / propene). Results show that NOx emissions for this vehicle appear dependent on autogas composition. The two gas mixtures containing only 30% butane gave about 50% more NOx at +25°C than the 70% butane autogas mixture.