Optimal Speed Ranges for Different Vehicle Types for Exhaust Emission Control

Controlling vehicle speed is crucial for reducing exhaust emissions and ensuring the sustainable development of road transportation. Currently, speed limits on expressways are primarily set from a safety perspective, with limited research addressing speed limits from an environmental protection standpoint. In this study, based on real-world vehicle experiments and a vehicle flow exhaust emission model, we investigated the exhaust emission characteristics of light passenger vehicles (categorized as M1) and freight vehicles (categorized as N, including N1-minivans, N2-light heavy-duty vehicles, N3-medium heavy-duty vehicles, and N4-large heavy-duty vehicles) both individually and in traffic flows at varying speeds. We take carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), particular matter (PM), and hydrocarbons (HCs) as representative emission components. The emission rate ranking of typical exhaust factors differs between M1-light passenger vehicles and N-freight vehicles. For M1-light passenger vehicles, the order is CO > HC > NOx > PM2.5, while for N-freight vehicles, it is NOx > CO > PM2.5 > HC. Conversely, for freight vehicles, higher speeds correlate with increased exhaust emissions in general, although carbon emissions specifically decrease as the speed increases. The results indicate the following speed limits conducive to sustainable road transportation development and low exhaust and carbon emissions: 90–110 km/h for light passenger vehicles and 80–100 km/h for freight vehicles.

Weiwei Liu, Jianbei Liu, Qiang Yu, Donghui Shan, Chao Wang, Zhiwei Wu