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Lean-burn Spark Ignition Direct Injection (SIDI) engines offer potential fuel economy savings, however, lack of cost-effective lean NOx aftertreatment systems has hindered its broad application. Lean NO Trap (LNT) and Urea Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technologies have been widely investigated as possible solutions, but they both have considerable drawbacks. LNT catalysts suffer from high Platinum Group Metals (PGM) cost, poor thermal durability, sulfur poisoning and active SO regeneration requirements. Urea SCR systems require a secondary fluid tank with an injection system, resulting in added system cost and complexity. Other concerns for urea SCR include potential freezing of the urea solution and the need for customers to periodically fill the urea reservoir. In this paper we report a low-cost, high efficiency concept that has the potential to be a key enabler for lean-burn gasoline engines.

Lean-burn SIDI engine technology offers improved fuel economy; however, the reduction of NOx during lean-operation continues to be a major technical hurdle in the implementation of energy efficient technology. There are several aftertreatment technologies, including the lean NOx trap and active urea SCR, which have been widely considered, but they all suffer from high material cost and require customer intervention to fill the urea solution. Recently reported passive NH₃-SCR system - a simple, low-cost, and urea-free system - has the potential to enable the implementation of lean-burn gasoline engines. Key components in the passive NH₃-SCR aftertreatment system include a close-coupled TWC and underfloor SCR technology. NH₃ is formed on the TWC with short pulses of rich engine operation and the NH₃ is then stored on the underfloor SCR catalysts.

Vehicles that meet the Federal Tier II and the California LEV II Vehicle Standards (e.g. ULEV and SULEV) are a rapidly growing percentage of the fleet. Sales weighted fleet average emissions of new vehicles are already below the LEV certification levels and should be below ULEV certification levels within two years. ULEV and SULEV vehicles represent the “typical” vehicle future for the next decade or two. Data on particulate emissions from these vehicles are currently very limited. In this study, emission tests using the standard Federal Test Procedure (FTP) were conducted on a small in-use vehicle fleet of ULEV and SULEV vehicles to determine their particulate matter mass emission rates, chemical compositions, particle numbers, and particle size distributions. Particulate sampling utilized Teflon filters for mass determination and quartz filters + PUF-XAD cartridges for chemical speciation. Each bag of the test was sampled separately.

The cold starting and cold-state running cycle (i.e. engine warming up) of gasoline engines are the key points of exhaust emissions formation of modern engines, and also one of the very important targets for the increasingly stringent emissions regulations. The combustion stability in gasoline engine cold starting and warming up will impact the formation of its exhaust emissions. This paper introduces the improvement in cold starting and warming up combustion process for the motorcycle gasoline engine by high-energy, dual-spark plug based rapid burning system. Test results showed that the high-energy, dual-spark plug based rapid burning system was very helpful to rapid ignition under the engine cold starting condition. Meanwhile, because of increasing the burning velocity of the engine mixture, this solution can realize the larger ignition retard and stable combustion process under the engine warming-up condition.