Announcement on Suitability of 'Industrial Urea Solution → Vehicle Use' Delayed... Ministry of Environment Says "Additional Testing Needed"

Air Pollutant Emission Standards Met
However, Opinions Reflecting "Additional Experiments for SCR Safety Impact Assessment Are Desirable"
Plan to Conduct Technical Review by Adding 2 More Samples and Vehicle Types

The Korea Environment Institute is conducting tests using a test vehicle injected with non-vehicle urea solution to determine whether the pollutants emitted after actual driving meet the emission standards.

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Joo Sang-don] The timing for determining the suitability of using industrial urea solution for vehicles has been postponed. The Ministry of Environment obtained results from experiments on two types of non-vehicle urea solutions showing compliance with pollutant emission standards, but due to concerns about insufficient samples for accurate evaluation, it decided to conduct additional experiments on two more types.

The National Institute of Environmental Research under the Ministry of Environment announced the results of experiments conducted so far on whether industrial urea solution can be converted and used as vehicle urea solution on the 16th.

In this experiment, the Institute prepared six samples of industrial (non-vehicle) urea solutions sold on the market for purposes such as steel mills and thermal power plants, manufactured to meet vehicle urea solution standards (urea concentration around 32.5%). Among these, two samples with medium to high levels of aldehyde concentration were injected into vehicles, and over 11 days from the 2nd, it was reviewed whether the emitted pollutants after actual driving met emission standards. For analyzing air pollutants emitted after actual driving, these two samples were injected into the urea solution tank (capacity about 15ℓ) of a 2500cc class diesel cargo truck (Kia Bongo 3, 2021 model), and exhaust gas was analyzed after driving.

Kim Dong-jin, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Research, explained, "The analysis results showed that all air pollutant emission standards, including carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), were met," adding, "Compared to vehicle urea solutions sold on the market, the pollutant emission concentrations were generally similar." Regarding aldehydes, Sample 1 showed a 7.9% decrease compared to vehicle urea, while Sample 2 showed a 19.8% increase.

However, urea solution manufacturers, automobile makers, and air environment experts expressed opinions that additional tests are desirable for an accurate evaluation of environmental impacts caused by using industrial urea solution and the safety effects on the vehicle’s selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system. They also noted that since industrial urea solutions vary significantly in component content depending on their manufacturing purpose, their applicability may differ according to component content conditions.

Accordingly, the Institute judged that this test alone is insufficient to evaluate the applicability of non-vehicle urea solutions and plans to proceed with a technical review by adding two samples with lower aldehyde concentrations and additional test vehicle types (3.5t Mighty).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.