PhD Studentship: Reducing Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollutants Emissions From Hybrid Vehicles

Lead Supervisor’s full name & email address

Dr Hu Li – h.li3@leeds.ac.uk

Co-supervisor name(s)

Professor John Plane – j.m.c.plane@leeds.ac.uk

Dr Alexander James – a.james1@leeds.ac.uk 

Project summary

This project is to investigate the co-benefits of cleaner fuels and novel exhaust aftertreatment systems on the mitigation of emissions from hybrid vehicles. The aim is to reduce carbon and air pollutant emissions from transport and off-road vehicles/machines simultaneously.

While the pace of electrification in the transport sector is accelerating, it is still a major challenge for heavy duty vehicles including marine sectors to decarbonise. It is expected that liquid fuels will continue to be used in heavy duty vehicles for the foreseeable future. These liquid fuels could be bio or synthesised low carbon fuels.

As the legislation on tailpipe emissions is getting stricter with the EURO 7 to be implemented from 2025, highly effective exhaust aftertreatment systems are required. However, it becomes a challenge to comply with the emission legislation simply depending on one technology.

The project is to explore the combined use of clean low carbon fuels and effective exhaust aftertreatment systems to meet stringent emission legislation and simultaneously reduce carbon emissions. The project will use a novel patented catalyst (for NOx and CO reduction) developed at the University of Leeds and the state of the art engine and vehicle emission research facilities, to investigate interaction between low carbon fuels and exhaust catalytic conversion systems. A key feature of the patented catalyst is the capability to convert NOx at lower temperature (< 200°C) when the engine is at low load and cold operation, which is a major source of urban pollutions from vehicles when travelling at low speed and frequent stop/start. The project will investigate the real world driving emissions using a hybrid research vehicle.

You’ll be working with a group of enthusiastic researchers and industrial partners and able to enrich your experiences with hand on skills, instrumental and data processing skills and many more. The prospective sectors for your future career will be transport, engine and vehicle manufacture, environment, fuels and regulatory bodies etc.

Air pollution is a major cause of premature death and disease and is the single largest environmental health risk in Europe, according to a 2021 report published by the European Environment Agency. In the EU, 40400 premature deaths were attributed to chronic nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure in 2019. Out of total NOx emissions, about 34% were from transport in 2019. To reduce adverse health impacts of air pollution, the EU has set up a zero pollution plan, including a target to reduce premature deaths caused by air pollution by more than 55% by 2030.

Aims:

Develop an optimised solution for simultaneous reduction of GHG and air pollutants from hybrid vehicles by maximising the benefits of low carbon fuels and low temperature catalyst.

Objectives:

1. Establish an assessing tool for the screening of low carbon fuels, including sustainability, affordability and combustion behaviour etc.
2. Determine the operational characteristics of hybrid vehicles under various real world driving.
3. Investigate the catalytic performance of the low temperature catalyst.
4. Measure emissions of hybrid vehicles using low carbon fuels.
5. Determination of maximum potentials for carbon and air pollutant reductions by optimised combination of low carbon fuels and the low temperature catalyst.   

Please state your entry requirements plus any necessary or desired background

First or Upper Second Class UK Bachelor (Honours) or equivalent

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