Optimization Of Catalytic Converter For Cost And Effective Conversion For Spark Ignition Engines 2004-28-0008

Optimization of catalytic converter related to flow improvements, cost and conversion of pollutants using computational model and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are described in this paper. A computational model is developed for predicting the performance of Pd/Rh catalytic converter at wide range of operating conditions. An experimental investigation was done on Pd/Rh catalytic converter for validating the model. Optimization of the catalytic converter was carried out based on three parameters namely catalytic converter length, cell densities and typical metal loading. The cell densities varied from 200 cpi to 1200 cpi. The length of the catalytic converter varied from 70 mm to 180 mm. About 8 patterns were studied on Pd/Rh catalytic converter. The predicted patterns show that about 48 percent precious metal can be saved by proposed metal loading patterns. Commercially available Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was used to map gas flow pattern to identify effective and non-effective area. Two types of inlet headers were designed using CFD for better gas distribution over frontal area of a monolithic catalytic converter.