Search Results

Evolving marine diesel emission regulations drive significant reductions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. There is, therefore, considerable interest to develop and validate Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) converters for marine diesel NOx emission control. Substrates in marine applications need to be robust to survive the high sulfur content of marine fuels and must offer cost and pressure drop benefits. In principle, extruded honeycomb substrates of higher cell density offer benefits on system volume and provide increased catalyst area (in direct trade-off with increased pressure drop). However higher cell densities may become more easily plugged by deposition of soot and/or sulfate particulates, on the inlet face of the monolithic converter, as well as on the channel walls and catalyst coating, eventually leading to unacceptable flow restriction or suppression of catalytic function.

Direct catalytic soot oxidation is expected to become an important component of future diesel particulate emission control systems. The development of advanced Catalytic Diesel Particulate Filters (CDPFs relies on the interplay of chemistry and geometry in order to enhance soot-catalyst proximity. An extensive set of well-controlled experiments has been performed to provide direct catalytic soot oxidation rates in CDPFs employing small-scale side-stream sample exposure. The experiments are analyzed with a state-of-the-art diesel particulate filter simulator and a set of kinetic parameters are derived for direct catalytic soot oxidation by fuel-borne catalysts as well as by catalytic coatings. The influence of soot-catalyst proximity, on catalytic soot oxidation is found to be excellently described by the so-called Two-Layer model, developed previously by the authors.

Future diesel emission control systems have to effectively operate under non-conventional low-temperature combustion engine operating conditions. In this work the research and development efforts for the realization of a Multi-Functional catalyst Reactor (MFR) for the exhaust of the upcoming diesel engines is presented. This work is based on recent advances in catalytic nano-structured materials synthesis and coating techniques. Different catalytic functionalities have been carefully distributed in the filter substrate microstructure for maximizing the direct and indirect (NO2-assisted) soot oxidation rate, the HC and CO conversion efficiency as well as the filtration efficiency. Moreover, a novel filter design has been applied to enable internal heat recovery capability by the implementation of heat exchange between the outlet and the inlet to the filter flow paths.

In the present work we derive analytical solutions for the problem of convection, diffusion and chemical reaction in wall-flow monoliths. The advantage of having analytical instead of numerical treatments is clear as the analytical solutions not only can be exploited to bring full scale simulations of diesel particulate filters to the real time domain, but also they enable efficient implementations on computationally limited engine control units (ECUs) for on-board management and control of emission control systems. The presentation describes the mathematical problem formulation, the governing dimensionless parameters and the corresponding assumptions. Then the analytical solution is derived and several asymptotic (for limiting values of the parameters) and approximating solutions are developed, corresponding to different physical situations. Reactant distributions in the filter are presented and discussed for several values of the parameters.

Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) need to be periodically regenerated in order to achieve efficient and safe vehicle operation. Under typical diesel exhaust conditions, this invariably requires the raising of the exhaust gas temperature by active means, up to the point that particulate (soot) oxidation can be self-sustained in the filter. In the present work the development path of an advanced catalytic filter technology is presented. Full scale optimized Catalytic Diesel Particulate Filters (CDPFs) are tested in the exhaust of a light-duty modern diesel engine in line with a Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC). The management of the DOC-CDPF emission control system is facilitated by a virtual soot sensor in order to ensure energy-efficient operation of the emission control system.

As use of Particulate Filters (PFs) is growing not only for diesel but also for gasoline powered vehicles, the need for better understanding of deposit structure, growth dynamics and evolution arises. In the present paper we address a number of deposit growth and restructuring phenomena within particulate filters with the aim to improve particulate filter soot load estimation. To this end we investigate the dynamic factors that quantify the amount of particles that are stored within the wall and the restructuring of soot deposits. We demonstrate that particle accumulation inside the porous wall is dynamically controlled by the dimensionless Peclet number and provide a procedure for the estimation of parameters of interest such as the loaded filter wall permeability, the wall-stored soot mass at the onset of cake filtration.

Compliance with future emission standards for diesel powered vehicles is likely to require the deployment of emission control devices, such as particulate filters and DeNOx converters. Diesel emission control is merging with powertrain management and requires deep knowledge of emission control component behavior to perform effective system level integration and optimization. The present paper focuses on challenges associated with a critical component of diesel emission control systems, namely the diesel particulate filter (DPF), and provides a fundamental description of the transient filtration/loading, catalytic/NO2-assisted regeneration and ash-induced aging behavior of DPF's.