Measurement report: Emissions of intermediate-volatility organic compounds from vehicles under real-world driving conditions in an urban tunnel

Intermediate-volatility organic compounds (IVOCs) emitted from vehicles are important precursors to secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) in urban areas, yet vehicular emission of IVOCs, particularly from on-road fleets, is poorly understood. Here we initiated a field campaign to collect IVOCs with sorption tubes at both the inlet and the outlet in a busy urban tunnel (>30 000 vehicles per day) in south China for characterizing emissions of IVOCs from on-road vehicles. The average emission factor of IVOCs (EFIVOCs) was measured to be 16.77±0.89 mg km−1 (average ±95 % CI, confidence interval) for diesel and gasoline vehicles in the fleets, and based on linear regression, the average EFIVOCs was derived to be 62.79±18.37 mg km−1 for diesel vehicles and 13.95±1.13 mg km−1 for gasoline vehicles. The EFIVOCs for diesel vehicles from this study was comparable to that reported previously for non-road engines without after-treatment facilities, while the EFIVOCs for gasoline vehicles from this study was much higher than that recently tested for a China V gasoline vehicle. IVOCs from the on-road fleets did not show significant correlation with the primary organic aerosol (POA) or total non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) as results from previous chassis dynamometer tests. Estimated SOA production from the vehicular IVOCs and VOCs surpassed the POA by a factor of ∼2.4, and IVOCs dominated over VOCs in estimated SOA production by a factor of ∼7, suggesting that controlling IVOCs is of greater importance to modulate traffic-related organic aerosol (OA) in urban areas. The results demonstrated that although on-road gasoline vehicles have much lower EFIVOCs, they contribute more IVOCs than on-road diesel vehicles due to its dominance in the on-road fleets. However, due to greater diesel than gasoline fuel consumption in China, emission of IVOCs from diesel engines would be much larger than that from gasoline engines, signaling the overwhelming contribution of IVOC emissions by non-road diesel engines in China.