The widespread adoption of electric vehicles is expected not only to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but also to reduce air pollution, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year. However, there are some important potential issues that deserve the attention of researchers and the public.
All indications are that electric vehicles (EVs) will reach a tipping point in the coming years and will be more widely adopted in many countries. Today, 11% of new cars sold globally are fully electric (Norway in northern Europe, in particular, already has 80% of new cars sold in 2022 all-electric). More new policies, such as tax breaks for electric vehicles in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the United States, and regulations in many European countries and California to ban the sale of fossil fuel vehicles after 2035, are also accelerating the market share of electric vehicles.
At the same time, this electric vehicle revolution also heralds another benefit - cleaner air and healthier living conditions. By eliminating polluting gases such as nitrogen dioxide and VOCs emitted from the exhaust pipes of cars and trucks, the large-scale use of electric vehicles can cut levels of air pollutants in the environment that are associated with the hundreds of thousands of premature deaths worldwide each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, cancers and other diseases.
In some places, however, more electric vehicles could lead to an increase in ground-level ozone, which is the main polluting component of photochemical smog. There are even some other doubts, the extra weight of the EV battery accelerates the wear of the tires, so will the EV increase the pollution of particulate matter in the atmosphere?
So, overall, the widespread adoption of electric vehicles in the future could significantly reduce air pollution emitted by the exhaust pipes. Except there's a more complex issue: emissions may not be the only concern.
Tire wear
As tires wear, particulate matter is generated, but how much pollution does it bring? The team at Britain's Emissions Analytics decided to conduct a systematic investigation, cramming four people into a diesel Volkswagen Golf car to "make it as heavy as possible," Molden explained, before racing (at legal speed) on Britain's motorways. They carefully weigh tires before and after driving to determine how much tread is lost.
Their first rough calculations revealed a staggering level of particle pollution, more than 1,000 times higher by weight than tailpipe emissions over the same distance. Emissions Analytics data also shows that for every 1,000 pounds of vehicle weight, tire wear increases by about 20 percent, meaning that all-electric vehicles are likely to produce more tire particles (and more brake pad wear dust) than internal combustion engine vehicles, because EV batteries bring extra weight relative to gasoline vehicles. Studies have shown that about 10 to 20 percent of the particulate matter that falls off from tires remains in ambient air. The rest are either deposited on roads or washed into soil, streams and rivers. This can be a huge potential problem for aquatic life. One study showed that rainwater containing a tire preservative called 6PPD killed salmon that swim and spawn in urban rivers. We tend to think that cars cause air pollution, but as tailpipe emissions are reduced or eliminated, we need to "change our thinking and consider secondary marine pollution caused by vehicle emissions."
Overall, a quick shift to electric vehicles and trucks is clearly a prudent move. It won't solve all the problems of climate change and pollution caused by transportation, and there will be some unwanted side effects or unforeseen consequences, as is the case with almost all new technologies on a large scale. These trade-offs need to be better studied, understood and managed.
TOFWERK
TOFWERK offers different solutions for the possible environmental impact of conventional and fully electric vehicles during their life cycle as discussed in the text:
Vocus CI-TOF: By combining different types of chemical ionization ion sources (such as universal proton transfer reactions, or medium-pressure atmospheric pressure chemical ionization sources suitable for high oxidation states, macromolecules, and inorganic acids), it can cover the primary emission pollutants in automobile exhaust (how to better assess the health impact of urban traffic sources on residents: take the real-time monitoring of roadside air pollutants as an example, reprint: In the face of pollution under the "blue sky", Shanghai does this!). ——Report from CCTV) and its broad-spectrum online monitoring of photochemical intermediates and final products (on-line monitoring of VOCs and inorganic pollutants in the ambient atmosphere in winter: application demonstration of iodine anion Vocus chemical ionization mass spectrometer)
icpTOF provides an online monitoring platform for multi-element analysis of particulate matter formed by traditional automotive engine and tire wear and brake pad loss. In addition to the commonly used liquid injection for the analysis of single particles (granular information: What is single particle ICP-MS mass spectrometry? icpTOF can also be used with a gas exchange device (GED) to enable online broad-spectrum elemental analysis of tire wear particles and brake pad dust in vehicle exhaust or ambient atmosphere (DOI: 10.11351/jsaeronbun.48.1341). If these experiments are planned on the actual roadside, it can be expected to obtain first-hand data on vehicle model, driving speed, road traffic conditions and the concentration and composition of particulate matter emissions mentioned above, providing the most solid data support for systematic research and subsequent policy formulation by researchers.
Small goals for 2023: Imagine the experience and prospect of icpTOF being able to perform real-time online detection of particulate matter in the actual ambient atmosphere if there is no need for a gas exchange device (GED), which means that there is no need for expensive argon high-pressure gas cylinders.
Statement:
This article is from: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2220923120 More information: Carey, J.: The other benefit of electric vehicles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120, e2220923120, 10.1073/pnas.2220923120, 2023.This content is published only for academic exchange and is neutral to the views expressed therein. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete. The original content is jointly translated by http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) and Baidu Translation https://fanyi.baidu.com/#en/zh/, if there is any error, welcome to leave a message to correct.