Where does tyre wear go? Separating and quantifying rubber in environmental samples

随着电动汽车的不断推广，轮胎及其相关排放物可能成为机动车最大的污染源，但测量它们是很困难的。这是一个重要的领域，因为轮胎已被确定为海洋中微塑料的最大来源，因为它们流入水道。Emissions Analytics一直引领着现实世界测试方法的发展，不仅用于轮胎磨损率，还用于分析轮胎磨损对人类和更广泛环境的化学成分和潜在毒理学影响。联合国正在进行潜在监管的初步工作。轮胎磨损比其他排放物（包括排气管）的测量要复杂得多，因为轮胎是一个开放系统的一部分，轮胎磨损的材料被“喷射”到环境中，与其他材料混合——刹车磨损、道路磨损、再悬浮的灰尘和其他来源的污染。因此，挑战在于能够从车辆上或车辆附近采集样本，并能够准确地估计其中包含的轮胎磨损材料，将其与非轮胎部件分开。每一种污染源都有不同的化学指纹，或者含有独特的示踪剂，可以帮助它们相互区分。如果没有这样的分离，虽然我们可以测量从轮胎中流失的材料，但我们无法完全了解它以什么形式脱落以及流向哪里。Emissions Analytics已经具备了测量轮胎磨损的有机成分的能力，利用内部最先进的化学分析技术，该公司开发了轮胎指纹数据库，用于检测轮胎中潜在的有害含碳化合物。该公司还开发了一种正在申请专利的系统，可以在车辆在现实世界中行驶时对轮胎磨损材料进行物理采样。因此，解决问题所需的许多组件都已到位，但需要在采样优化和源分配数据分析方面的额外分析专业知识，以实现高质量的市场准备产品。因此，通过解决这一采样和测量挑战，有可能在应对当前和预防未来环境挑战方面释放私营部门价值和公共价值。对于Emissions Analytics来说，这将成为其不断增长的轮胎分析服务套件的一个额外元素。

With the on-going roll-out of electric vehicles, tyres and their associated emissions are potentially becoming the biggest source of pollution from motor vehicles, but measuring them is hard. It is an important area as tyres have been identified as potentially the largest source of microplastics in the ocean, as a result of run-off into water courses. Emissions Analytics has been leading the development of real-world test methodologies, both for tyre wear rates, but also to profile the chemical composition and potential toxicological effects of the wear on humans and the wider environment. Initial work on potential regulation is underway at the United Nations.Tyre wear is more complex to measure than other emissions, including tailpipe, because tyres are part of an open system, where material abraded from tyre is 'sprayed' into the environment, where it mixes with other material - brake wear, road wear, resuspended dust and pollution from other sources. The challenge, therefore, is to be able to take a sample from on or near a vehicle and being able to estimate with good accuracy the tyre wear material contained in it, separately from the non-tyre components. Each of those pollution sources has a different chemical fingerprint, or contains unique tracers that can help separate them from each other. Without such separation, while we can measure the material lost from a tyre, we cannot fully understand in what form it is shed and where it goes.Emissions Analytics has an existing capability to measure the organic constituents of tyre wear using an in-house state-of-the art chemical analysis, using which it has developed a tyre fingerprinting database for the potentially harmful carbon-containing compounds in tyres. It has also developed a patent-pending system for physically sampling tyre wear material on a vehicle as it drives around in the real world. Therefore, many of the components required are in place to address the problem, but additional analytical expertise in both sampling optimisation and source apportionment data analysis is needed to achieve a high quality, market-ready offering.Therefore, by addressing this sampling and measurement challenge, there is the potential to unlock private sector value together with a public value in addressing current and pre-empting future environmental challenges. For Emissions Analytics, it would form an additional element to its growing suite of tyre analysis services.