Key factors controlling the real exhaust emissions from earthwork machines

This study focuses on the actual exhaust emissions of regulated and unregulated pollutants from earthwork machines (EM). In addition to providing a realistic assessment of gaseous and particulate emissions from key EM and filling critical data gaps in emission inventories, it emphasizes the importance of breaking down the average operating emission factors into task-related emission factors (TEF). The latter serve many goals, namely by: categorizing EM in relation to their emission dynamics, finding emission determinants and proposing on-site emission mitigation strategies. These have also led to a more refined analysis of both the effectiveness of EU and US emissions standards and the accuracy of NONROAD2008 model. Ultimately, by using task-related emission factors in conjunction with data available from the literature and with the methodology developed by US-EPA, a lower bound was estimated for gaseous exhaust emissions from the major construction vehicles operable at earthwork sites.