Measurement of carbonyls in exhaust gases of light-duty vehicles in China using pentafluorophenyl hydrazine derivatisation and GC/MS analysis

Abstract

A method for determining carbonyl emissions from motor vehicles was developed in which exhaust gases from test vehicles running on a dynamometer are directly collected in 6-L Teflon bags and then introduced into pentafluorophenyl hydrazine -coated adsorbent tubes for derivatisation and subsequent analysis of generated derivatives by GC/MS. Twenty gasoline and LPG light-duty vehicles were sampled at a vehicle inspection station in Guangzhou, China, by running test vehicles over a transient testing cycle and analysed for carbonyls. Results show that the method can achieve a detection limit of 8–28 ng m⁻³ for individual carbonyls with a relative standard deviation of 14.5%. Twenty-four carbonyls were identified in the gasoline vehicle exhaust gases and their total concentration was 19.2 mg m⁻³. For the LPG vehicles, 20 carbonyls were found in the exhaust gases with a total concentration of 4.71 mg m⁻³. Based on the results, carbonyl emission factors for the gasoline and LPG vehicles were estimated to be 25.0 and 7.36 mg km⁻¹, respectively.

Keywords:

• motor vehicle emissions
• dynamometer testing
• carbonyl compounds
• simple transient test procedure
• pentafluorophenyl hydrazine

ORCID

Hao Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0301-2050

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Fund [grant number 40975077] and the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Guangdong Province Joint Fund [grant number U1201232].