Sign up for our weekly email to stay on top of the latest news and insights!
Source: The following article about the overall brake-dust issue was posted by Deaglán Ó Meachair on BrakeBetter.com.
WICKLOW, Ireland – In this article, we will revisit the topic of brake dust, and look at some of the devices that are in the public domain that hope to solve the issue. We will see growing evidence of testing activities, as well as commercializing new concepts, and review the surge in new intellectual property in this area.
You can’t control what you can’t measure.
First stop on this journey is a quick review of the civic and legal context for this. We know that much attention is paid to vehicle emissions, and we also know that stringent efforts are being made to clean up air quality, including the contribution from road transport. When we considered the effect of lockdown in 2020, we saw a widespread and sustained push towards mitigating and reducing various pollutants, including the particulate matter that concern us with brake dust.
Related post:
VW Develops Brake Dust Vacuum
This knowledge is not lost on government bodies. Indeed, within Europe and the USA, brake emissions have been understood to play a significant role in air quality. So, it should come as no surprise that coordinated international efforts are underway to agree a method of measuring and eventually mitigating these emissions. For the European Union, a working group consisting of vehicle manufacturers, suppliers and academics are working with the scientific arm of the European Commission, the Joint Research Centre to reach a consensus on both laboratory methods and a suitable test cycle to measure brake particles. Japanese and US legislators are included as well, with the Japanese in particular taking an active role in verifying the approaches for their jurisdiction. These efforts are expected to conclude in 2020, and therefore the next stage for the industry will be how to manage brake emissions.
Time to get cleaning
So, it follows that the brake industry is engaged in finding strategies to limit emissions. Recent spy shots have shown some active test programs at major OEMs, and the major industry conferences are chock full of brake emissions papers, presentations, workshops and product booths. And in the midst of this several companies have created propositions to capture brake dust as it is generated, either through filtration enveloping the brake disc, a remote vacuum pulling dust to a central filter, or through a sealed encapsulation device which surrounds the brake completely.
The first of these is from a company called Clean Brake Performance. This system is designed to sit alongside the caliper, and so fully encompass the disc. It uses the pumping effect of disc vanes to force air through filtration elements aligned to the friction surface. As such, it is functional as long as the vehicle is moving and can prevent emissions which occur between brake events.
Next is a company called Tallano, with their Tamic product. This system uses a remote vacuum and filter, with a novel design of pad to ensure generated particles are captured. The system incorporates an electronic controller and can be triggered by a suitable brake request to begin filtration. The reliance on a remote vacuum, rather than disc-based pumping means there is no loss of thermal capacity in the disc, and the system can operate equally well at any vehicle speed. However, to capture dust, the pad must be engaged at the friction surface. Therefore, it is likely that any off-brake emissions may not be captured.
The entire post with accompanying images can be viewed by clicking HERE.
