Tire Particle Emissions: Demand on Reliable Characterization


 Tire emissions are recently becoming an important topic in environmental science and among visionary automotive engineers. Deep understanding of the mechanisms involved in tire wear and emissions and their reliable physical/chemical characterization should be assumed as an urgent task. With the aim to contribute to a trustworthy characterization of tire wear and emissions, this paper presents both (i) analysis of state-of-the-art in this field and (ii) a first experimental approach to the collection of particles from a rotating tire in a new developed test box.

• Tires contribution to PM10, PM2,5 and PM1.0 exists and will become a hot topic in the next years.
• Understanding the intrinsic nature of the generation, life and destiny of particles is a challenging (and very probably impossible) goal, but absolutely necessary if component improvements, control techniques and future legislation are intended to be achieved. Because… www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net 1-3 µm (field) < 100 nm (laboratory) www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net "Tire debris deposited on the road may release a number of chemicals when they interact with rain and/or runoff water" 1 "toxic to Daphnia magna and other organisms" 2,3,4 "not all organisms were sensitive to tire leachates" 5,6 "toxic for X. laevis embryo development linked to malformations" 7 "10% of the total particulate Zn load in Swedish cities came from tire wear" 8 (or even worse 9 ) "It is unlikely that the zinc concentrations leached from the tires used in artificial reefs would ever cause acute or even chronic toxicity" 10 "low risk to aquatic ecosystems and no-observableadverse-effect-level of TRWP in rats" 11,12 "Lung toxicity induced by TP 10 was primarily due to macrophage-mediated inflammatory events, while toxicity induced by TP 2.5 appeared to be related more closely to cytotoxicity" 9 www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net  Inter-governmental research program under the auspices of The Working Party on Pollution and Energy (GRPE)  Aimed to develop new vehicle exhaust particle measurement procedures for regulatory use (with special consideration for particle emissions at very low levels).
• TIP 2  Supported by the 11 most important tire producers  Main goals: anticipate the potential long term environmental and health issues relating to tire materials, tire road wear particles, end of life tires and recycling management www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net

Tire particle emissions CONCLUSIONS
• Most of the characterization works were carried out in the last decades and hence the information about concentration, size distribution, chemical characterization, and so on may be not accurate anymore.
• The recent works were mostly focused in the environmental impact by means of collected samples without a standardized procedure and no clear conclusions about future concerns came out.
• No one of the existing measurement devices for particle number, mass and size are propitious for tire debris.
Despite the big effort of all the authors in this topic… www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net Tire particle emissions CONCLUSIONS • The two principal factors conditioning the amount and characteristics of the tire emissions are the tread and pavement composition and geometry  Characterization is extremely difficult • The absence of (i) standardized sampling methods, (ii) mechanisms comprehension, (iii) physical models and (iv) relevant data, turn this topic into a puzzle that must be addressed simultaneously from several angles.
• Future works are currently taking place in a new developed laboratory environment and will conduce to a more deep understanding... www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net

Tire particle emissions
• Sectional aluminum structure of size (2.4 x 2.0 x 3.2) m with totally detachable steel walls which can be adapted for any tire dimension.
• The bell allows the air flow entering from the space between the drum and the floor and carrying the particles generated in the tire-drum contact to come easily to the sampling tunnel thanks to a tube fan located at its end.

CHARACTERIZATION AT TUIL
Designed collection box www.tu-ilmenau.de www.iteam-project.net

CHARACTERIZATION AT TUIL
Preliminary results