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Small Commercial Vehicle (SCV) is an emerging Commercial Vehicle (CV) segment both in India and throughout the world. Vehicles in this segment have diesel engine of capacity less than 1 l and GVW of less than 3.5 t. Normally for the CV, engines are tested on engine dynamometer for emission test, but SCV are tested on chassis dynamometer as they are classified as N1.1 class vehicles. Hence SCV have to follow same emission regulations as diesel passenger cars. The main challenge is to meet BS-IV NOx and PM emission target together with high torque optimization along with required durability targets. This paper addresses this challenge and reports the work carried out on an Indian SCV with 0.7 l naturally aspirated indirect injection diesel engine.

On one hand, latest worldwide emissions legislation developments aim to reduce NOx and Particulate Matter (PM) emissions of all diesel engines, while on the other hand lower fuel consumption diesel engines are still required for lower fleet average CO₂ emissions. As a consequence of the chosen CO₂ optimized combustion mode, the raw NOx emission increases and as such Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technology will be the future choice for high efficiency NOx aftertreatment. This paper deals with SCR technology and its derivative SCRi® technology, when diesel particle reduction is required, especially for heavy-duty applications. Alongside the developed metal catalyst technologies, a complete SCR reducing agent dosing system is presented. Emission results gained with the SCR or SCRi® technologies on European commercial engines illustrate the potential of these technologies for conversion of NOx and PM emissions.

Particulates in Diesel Exhaust Gas have become a major concern of Environment Protection Agencies in the recent years. The main focus was placed on the so called Nano Particles which are the most harmful to human beeings. OEMs for car, light and heavy commercial vehicle industries have been working on different technologies for a number of years to meet the stringent emission legislations. At the same time some countries have started schemes to retrofit older vehicles that are still on the road and greatly contribute to air pollution. The government of Korea took the worldwide lead and defined 3 categories of required PM reduction rates and incentives to LDV and HDV owners who are prepared to retrofit their vehicles.

Emission legislations for the light / medium and heavy duty vehicles are becoming more and more stringent worldwide. Tightening of NOx and Particulate Matter (PM) limits further from Euro III to Euro IV levels has provoked the need of either controlling NOx from the engine measures and use PM control after-treatment devices such as Partial Flow Filters, or, controlling PM from the engine measures and use NOx control devices such as Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems. Manufacturers have adopted different strategies, depending upon the suitability, cost factors, infrastructure development and ease of maintenance of these systems. PM Metalit®, is a partial flow filter, which captures particulates coming out of the exhaust and re-generates on a continuous basis with the help of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) in the exhaust.

Metal based Diesel Particulate Filters (PM-TRAPs) could represent a short time solution to face with particulate (and NOx) emissions with a small influence on CO2 emission. In fact, the operation principle of the PM-TRAP, based on fluid dynamical behavior of exhaust flow in “ad hoc” shaped geometries, allows to separate the particle content of exhaust-gases but needs to be carefully assessed to optimize filter performances. In this paper a mixed numerical and experimental procedure has been developed; it allows to finely tune the design parameters which can be used to achieve pre-defined targets in terms of particulate matter and fuel consumption. By adopting the previously declared procedure, a PM-TRAP “optimal” geometry has been chosen. Its performance has been verified with respect to experimental data. Results are encouraging and suggest further development of the system.

In the near future the effort on the development of exhaust gas treatment systems must be increased to meet the stringent emission requirements. If the relevant physical and chemical models are available, the numerical simulation is an important tool for the design of these systems. This work presents a CFD model that allows to cover the full range of applications in this area. After a detailed presentation of the theoretical background and the modeling strategies results for the simulation of a close-coupled catalyst are shown. The presented model is also applied to the oxidation of nitrogen oxides, to a diesel particle filter and a fuel-cell reformer catalyst.

Soot filtration represents a major problem for the complete exploiting of Diesel engines characteristics in terms of global efficiency and CO2 emissions. Even though the engines development in the last years let the engine performances improve, exhaust gas after treatment is still required to respect the foreseen limits for soot and NOx emissions. A flow-through particle trap has been presented with a great potential in soot removal without major penalties in terms of exhaust back pressure. The device performance is strictly connected to channel geometry. This paper deals with that relation by means of an experimental-numerical approach.