VERA will develop, optimise and demonstrate innovative tailpipe retrofit solutions that address particle (sub-23nm) and NOx emissions of road vehicles running on gasoline and natural gas and driving high mileages within the city (taxi, delivery van, bus), while particular considerations will be made for NH3 emissions. VERA will start in September 2022 and will run for 3 years.

Project goals

• Develop, demonstrate and optimise tailpipe retrofit solutions for road vehicles, achieving the emission reduction targets and ensuring adaptability and low cost.
• Develop, demonstrate and optimise brake retrofit solutions for road vehicles and metro/rail applications, achieving the emission reduction targets and ensuring adaptability and low cost.
• Assess the overall impacts of retrofitting by improving the understanding of health impacts of air pollution from transport emissions and by evaluating the effectiveness of retrofitting in terms of benefits and costs.

Consortium

The partners of the VERA consortium bring together unique capacities and expertise from different engineering sectors (mechanics, thermodynamics, chemical, materials) and scientific disciplines (automotive and rail engineering, biology and health sciences, natural sciences and physics) and have strong background on emissions and the related environmental and health impacts, as well as on emission control from mobile sources and retrofitting.

RIVM role

RIVM has a leading role in ensuring that the proposed retrofit solutions do not pose any environmental and health risks. Comprehensive evaluation of the developed systems will include: toxicity analyses of particles before and after the implementation of the retrofit systems. 

RIVM contact: Prof. Flemming Cassee.

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101056893.