A novel ambient dilution tunnel has been designed, tested and employed to measure the emissions from active parked regenerations of Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) for 2007 and 2010 certified heavy duty diesel trucks (HDDTs). The 2007 certified engine had greater regulated emissions than the 2010 certified engine. For a fully loaded 2007 DPF there was an initial period of very large mass emissions, which was then followed by very large number of small particle emissions. The Particle Size Distribution, PSD, was distributed over a large range from 10 nm to 10 μm. The parked regenerations of the 2010 DPF had a much lower initial emission pattern, but the second phase of large numbers of small particles was very similar to the 2007 DPF. The emission results during regeneration have been compared to total emissions from recent engine dynamometer testing of 2007 and 2010 DPFs, and they are much larger.
Due to the very wide spectrum in the PSD a wide variety of instrumentation was used, which included the following: (1) Engine On-board diagnostics; (2) Exhaust flow PEMS; (3) Tunnel temperature, CO2, mixture dilution ratio, and relative humidity; (4) Real-time PM instrumentation: EEPS, SMPS, DustTrak, and Dekati Mass Monitor; and (5) Gravimetric filter media. This instrumentation allowed for the determination of PM, NOx, real-time Particle Size Distribution (PSD), real time particle numbers, and estimates of real time mass emissions. It has been shown that the ambient dilution tunnel creates a homogenous mixture of ambient air and exhaust gases, which gives detailed information on the emissions into the atmosphere.