Vehicle exhaust emissions inspection system for roadworthiness enforcement

Abstract

Air pollution has been a growing concern as Kenya tries to industrialize. Increase in the number of vehicles and factories as well as constructions in Nairobi make this all the more critical. This polluted air has far reaching consequences which include illnesses that lead to death. Measuring the concentration of air pollutants is necessary to establish the quality of air in the city. By extension, measuring the concentration of pollutants being emitted through vehicle exhaust fumes can help establish if the vehicle is worthy to be on the road. To best measure the degree of these pollutants, random on-the-road inspection of vehicle inspection of vehicle exhaust emissions is key. However, this has not been achieved by the Kenyan law enforcement agencies. The ability to inspect the emissions from cars on the road will help law enforcement remove unroadworthy vehicles from the roads and thus minimize air pollution caused by vehicles. Conventional inspection methods are done in controlled environments such as laboratories. Vehicles are driven in and are inspected while they remain stationary. These controlled tests fall short of revealing the true state of a vehicle’s exhaust emissions: the fumes emitted while a car is on open road are different in composition from those emitted in such a controlled environment. In addition, manufacturers can tweak their vehicles to emit gases that are within the prescribed thresholds as was done by Volkswagen in order to meet and exceed the US Environment Protection Agency standards. This study will present a model that utilizes sensors to assess the level of pollutants produced from a vehicle exhaust to the air and register these to back-end server hosted on the cloud. The model will have an LCD screen on which law enforcement can view levels of pollutants as measured by the sensors. The information will be stored in