Development of a Mobile Emission Test Car for Indian Railways

In a historic judgment the National Greens Tribunal of India has stipulated that Indian Railways should specify emission standards for diesel locomotives of Indian Railways and implement technologies to reduce these pollutants from diesel locomotives in a time bound manner. In order to decide on the emission standards, it is essential that an emission inventory of the diesel locomotives be obtained from across different areas, working environments, different configurations and age groups. Indian Railways has a population of about 5000 diesel locomotives and 56 diesel sheds and it is not possible to establish mass emission measurement systems at all diesel sheds because of the high cost of these measurement systems as well as a scientific group of personnel required for carrying out these measurements as per International standards like US EPA and Europe UIC. Both of these international emission standards stipulate mass based measurements of the pollutants in order to arrive at the emission levels of a diesel locomotive. Engine Development Directorate at Research Designs & Standards Organisation (RDSO) has setup mass emission measurement systems at RDSO for measuring emissions from test engines. At least, 100 diesel locomotives are required to be measured from different areas, configurations, age groups, etc. in order to arrive at statistically significant upper and lower control limits. It is not physically possible to bring these 100 locomotives to Engine Development Directorate at RDSO, therefore a mobile emissions test car was designed and manufactured by Indian Railways. This mobile emission test car is capable of measuring mass emissions from the diesel locomotives as per the International standards. This chapter discusses the process of how this mobile emission test car was envisaged and manufactured. This included the layout, selection of the equipments and ease of operation so as to meet the international emission measurement standards.