A Novel Emission Tester for Diesel Vehicles

Vehicle emissions remain the major source of human health issues. Several mechanisms have been developed to mitigate emissions from the automotive industry; thus, emission testers are a prominent means to measure and control vehicle emissions. Though emission testing started decades ago, Sri Lanka has imposed taxation policies based on vehicle emissions since 2003. This research aims to develop a portable emission tester that can update the emission status of diesel vehicles rather than obtaining the reports annually. The basic procedure of the experiment is to check the average K-factor value of the vehicle by conducting three snap acceleration procedures. The K-factor value must be less than 4 (as new rules and regulations are updated), and the variation must be less than 1 from one to another procedure. The K-factor calculation is derived from SAE-J1667, which is a universal document that is used to identify rules and regulations of automobile diesel emission tests. The components, namely Arduino nano, Arduino Mega, a wireless transmitter, a magnetic pickup sensor, a piezo sensor, an optical dust sensor, a buck converter, a battery management system, and a display were used to build the system. The results were compared with the test results obtained from the localized emission test centers. This developed module provided a more detailed description of vehicles with in-depth analysis. Moreover, the system suggested the improvements required for diesel vehicles with higher emissions. Feedback model analysis was performed to understand the market expectations with this novel solution. Briefly, 75% of targeted population of 253 were positive on the developed solution. On average, the developed device indicated values around 0.79, whereas the emission report provided a value of 0.675. It can be concluded that both results are comparable and beneficial for remote usage in terms of diesel vehicles.