Measuring emissions from an excavator in Norway: our ISM campaign under real-world conditions.

Discover in detail our ISM measurement project on an excavator in Norway, from installation to results.

A measurement campaign under real-world operating conditions

The Stage V regulation imposes strict requirements on non-road mobile machinery regarding pollutant emissions, with the aim of reducing the environmental impact of thermal vehicles operating on construction sites. To demonstrate compliance, operators must now be able to produce real-world measured data, in accordance with the ISM (In-Service Monitoring) protocol. It was within this framework that our client wanted to assess the pollutant emissions of their engine installed on an excavator under normal operating conditions, while maintaining continuity of their operations.

The particular challenge of this mission lay in the specific characteristics of the machine: the cold and humidity of the construction site influence the engine's behavior, while the excavator itself operates with different types of loading (empty arm or loaded). These constraints required particularly precise monitoring throughout the campaign to ensure data representative of the machine's real-world use.

A tailor-made ISM campaign, adapted to the vehicle's work cycles

To address this challenge, we deployed an ISM testing campaign by instrumenting the machine with a PEMS (Portable Emissions Measurement System), enabling real-time measurement of the main pollutants regulated by the Stage V standard: nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and unburned hydrocarbons (HC). The tests took place on a construction site under real operating conditions, to cover a sufficient variety of operational situations and ensure good representativeness of the collected data.

Several key parameters were tracked throughout the campaign, notably the different load cycles encountered by the engine according to the excavator's work phases. The site's geographic remoteness was also a logistical challenge in its own right: working in Norway required specific organization, from international transport of the measurement equipment, to verifying its integrity upon arrival, to close coordination with local teams to align our tests with the operation's schedule.

Expertise mobilized beyond compliance

This campaign allowed CRMT to deploy its ISM expertise in a new European territory, adapting to the specifics of a Norwegian construction site and the load cycles specific to an excavator. It provided the client with precise knowledge of the different types of emissions from their vehicle under normal operating conditions, a solid basis for anticipating upcoming regulatory changes and, if necessary, initiating optimization efforts.

This mission illustrates the deployment of CRMT's ISM expertise beyond its usual borders, actively contributing to the reduction of pollutant emissions from non-road mobile machinery at the European scale.