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Trends towards lower vehicle fuel consumption and smaller environmental impact will increase the share of Diesel hybrids and Diesel Range Extended Vehicles (REV). Because of the Diesel engine presence and the ever tightening soot particle emissions, these vehicles will still require soot particle emissions control systems. Ceramic wall-flow monoliths are currently the key players in the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) market, offering certain advantages compared to other DPF technologies such as the metal based DPFs. The latter had, in the past, issues with respect to filtration efficiency, available filtration area and, sometimes, their manufacturing cost, the latter factor making them less attractive for most of the conventional Diesel engine powered vehicles. Nevertheless, metal substrate DPFs may find a better position in vehicles like Diesel hybrids and REVs in which high instant power consumption is readily offered enabling electrical filter regeneration.

The pore structure of DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) is one of the key factors in contributing the fuel consumption and the emission control performance of a vehicle. The pressure loss of mini samples (1 in. in diameter, 2 in. in length) with various pore structures was measured at relatively low filtration velocity (< 5 cm/sec). Then the obtained data were evaluated by using an index of “permeability”. As a result, among the parameters which characterize the pore structure, it was found that the size of the pore diameter and the sharpness of pore distribution were the most contributing factors in reducing pressure loss which in turn is related to the fuel consumption performance when the cell structure was fixed. On the other hand, it was found that the gas permeability was not affected significantly by any parameter when the catalyst was coated because the coating caused a broadening of the pore distribution.

Diesel particulate filters (DPFs) equipped with diesel vehicles have become indispensable components to capture the soot emitted from the engines from a viewpoint of both human health and global warming problems as well as the prevailing regulations. Meanwhile, the pressure drop caused by them leads to a direct increase of fuel consumption. In order to reduce it guaranteeing the sufficient soot filtration efficiency, we have developed the new concept of asymmetric plugging layout for the DPF design, so-called Valuable Plugging Layout (VPL), on the basis of octosquare (OS) structure and have clarified the advantage of the pressure drop reduction both experimentally and theoretically. The VPL-DPF consists of two kinds of octagonal/square inlet channels and octagonal outlet channels, and there are thought to be five filtration velocity modes as well as four kinds of soot deposit layers on each side of the inlet channel walls.