Over the next two years, Danish clean tech company Amminex Emissions Technology will receive a total of 1.9 million euros (approximately $2 million) from the European Union (EU) R&D program Horizon 2020 to demonstrate that the company’s technology platform ASDS is capable of providing the foundation that regulators need to introduce an even stricter low emissions vehicle legislation after 2017.
Horizon 2020 is the largest ever EU research and innovation program with nearly 80 billion euros ($86 billion) of funding over seven years available to help European companies and universities achieve breakthroughs and discoveries by taking ideas from the lab to the market. As part of the extensive program, small- and medium-sized enterprises such as Amminex are being encouraged to participate.
Amminex has received funding for a project through a so-called SME (Small Medium Enterprise) instrument designed specifically for innovative smaller companies in need of funding for product development. From larger to smaller diesel vehicles, the project objective is to develop and demonstrate that Amminex’s already commercial ASDS technology and components for buses and trucks can be adapted to work in small- to medium-sized engines in passenger cars, light commercial vehicles and vans. Special focus will be on the documentation of compliance with existing and future legislation, fuel savings, CO2 benefits and NO2 reduction, both in an engine lab environment and in real driving conditions on the road.
“Over the last decades, EU regulation of diesel emissions has been far less successful than originally envisaged by regulators, particularly regarding NOx emissions. More recently, the Euro 5 and the current Euro 6 standards have led to some improvements. Still, regulators are not satisfied because a large share of the EU member states remain struggling to comply with required air quality limit values,” said Ulrich Quaade, head of R&D at Amminex.
An important reason is the fact that the EU regulatory test cycle is incapable of reproducing real-world driving. In practice, this means that although Euro 5 and Euro 6 diesel cars appear to have lower NOx emissions than those of Euro 3 and 4, their absolute emissions in real-world driving are in fact significantly higher.
“The test cycle underestimates real-world driving by a significant margin. Actually, research indicates factors of about four or even more depending on the route driven. This is why the EU is developing a more elaborate test procedure to ensure real-world emissions of Euro 6 light duty diesels and subsequent legislated levels will actually deliver the expected reductions,” explained Quaade.
Creating the foundation for future legislation
One of the concrete targets formulated in Horizon 2020 is to fund research that leads to new transport technologies able to comply with stricter post Euro 6 limits under real-world driving conditions while complying with future legislation on CO2 emissions. For the longer term, the vision is to establish a future super-low emission vehicle standard with emission targets that are ambitiously lower than the current Euro 6. Moreover, regulators are looking for an improvement in fuel consumption by 5 percent for diesel when compared to the best vehicles on the market in 2013.
