VERA - Reducing emissions of modern in-use vehicle technologies through retrofits
Customer requirements
The Horizon Europe consortium programme VERA (Vehicle emissions retrofit activity) aims to develop and retrofit technologies to control NOx and/or particle emissions from early Euro 6 road vehicles and from rail rolling stock. Ricardo activity focuses on exhaust emissions, targeting affordable reduction of specific pollutants from gasoline light commercial vehicles, and aligning these with Euro 7 levels, but with additional engagement in the reduction of brake wear emissions from several vehicle types.
Exhaust emissions targets are to reduce exhaust PN23 by 90% and NOx by 50-60%, with a cost <= 10% of the current market value of the vehicle.
Ricardo solution
Ricardo and partners will produce and retrofit a coated gasoline particle filter (GPF) targeting both NOx and PN reductions, and potentially explore the application of an ammonia oxidation catalyst (AMOX) to reduce ammonia emissions.
To date Ricardo’s experts have delivered the following support and benefits:
- Identified a suitable, representative candidate vehicle for retrofit – a Euro 6b Citroën Berlingo PFI
- Instrumented the vehicle exhaust, determined baseline emissions and prepared to receive the retrofit emissions control system unit
- Developed a testing scheme to evaluate and validate the retrofit
Customer benefit
Retrofits, along with suitable policy (eg incentives) can enable older, higher emitting vehicles to enter ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) areas otherwise restricted to the newest Euro 7 vehicles, bringing environmental and societal benefits.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101056893.