Tools of the Trade
March 2005
Catalyst monitoring
Southwest Research Institute's Universal Synthetic Gas Reactor (USGR) is a screening tool to evaluate emission catalyst formulations. The system can monitor overall catalyst performance in automotive emissions systems under a range of operating conditions and in various applications, including three-way catalysts, diesel oxidation catalysts, lean oxides of nitrogen, catalysts/traps, and sulfur traps. Other applications include selective reduction catalysts and reforming catalysts for hydrogen production. In addition to testing exhaust gas catalysts, relative durability testing can be addressed using aged, small-core catalysts. The device can simulate engine exhaust conditions for nearly all liquid and gaseous fuels including gasoline, diesel, compressed natural gas, and liquid petroleum gas. It can also simulate exhaust emissions from future high-tech vehicle concepts that do not always have hardware available for testing, such as hybrid vehicles, lean-burn engines, and homogeneous-charge compression-ignition engines.
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