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This paper describes recent progress in our program to develop an emissions technology allowing diesel engines to meet the upcoming 2007/2010 regulations for NOx. At the heart of this technology is the ArvinMeritor Diesel Fuel Reformer that reforms the fuel, on-demand, on-board a vehicle. The fuel reformer uses plasma to partially oxidize a mixture of diesel fuel and air creating a highly reducing mixture of Hydrogen and Carbon monoxide. In a previous publication, we have demonstrated that using a reformate rich in H2 and CO to regenerate a NOx trap is highly advantageous compared to vaporized diesel fuel used conventionally. In this paper we present results and a strategy for performing desulfation of the traps using the fuel reformer. In contrast to vaporized diesel, which requires very high temperatures that fall outside the normal exhaust operating temperatures for diesel engines, desulfation was achieved at temperatures lower by more than 100 °C using the Plasma Fuel Reformer.

This paper describes recent progress in our program to develop an emissions technology allowing diesel engines to meet the upcoming stringent worldwide regulations for NOx. The Plasma Fuel Reformer (PFR) has the ability to rapidly convert diesel fuel (with air), to a hydrogen rich gas on-board a vehicle, which is then utilized to efficiently regenerate a NOx trap. We have made several advances on the PFR as well as on the NOx reducing system. The Plasma Fuel Reformer operating range has been extended by 120% up to 1.5 g/s fuel flow rate while retaining the high hydrogen and low soot characteristics. The plasma power consumption has been further reduced and the high voltage design has been made more robust. The T90 start-up time during regenerations has been reduced to less than 4 seconds. The NOx reducing system utilizes a novel algorithm for NOx trap regeneration that reduces the fuel penalty by 25% while increasing NOx conversion by 10%.