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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.

Establishing a certain maintenance-free time period regarding modern diesel exhaust emission control systems is of major importance nowadays. One of the most serious problems Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) manufacturers face concerning system's durability is the performance deterioration due to the filter aging because of the accumulation of the ash particles. The evaluation of the effect of the ash aging on the filter performance is a time and cost consuming task that slows down the process of manufacturing innovative filter structures and designs. In this work we present a methodology for producing filter samples aged by accumulating ash produced by the controlled pyrolysis of oil-fuel solutions. Such ash particles bear morphological (size) and compositional similarity to ash particles collected from engine aged DPFs. The ash particles obtained are compared to those from real engine operation.

The measurement of vehicle particle number emissions and, therefore, regulation, necessitates a rigorous sampling and conditioning technology able to deliver solid emitted particles with minimum particle losses. European legislation follows a solid particle number measurement method with cutoff size at 23 nm proposed by the Particle Measurement Programme (PMP). Accordingly, the raw exhaust is sampled with constant volume, subsequently passes through a volatile particle remover (VPR), and finally is measured with a particle counter. Lowering the 23 nm cutoff size with current VPR technologies introduces measurement uncertainties mainly due to the high particle losses and possible creation of artefacts. This study describes the development and evaluation of a sampling and conditioning particle system, the SCPS, specially designed for sub-23 nm solid particles measurement.

Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) need to be periodically regenerated in order to achieve efficient and safe vehicle operation. Under typical diesel exhaust conditions, this invariably requires the raising of the exhaust gas temperature by active means, up to the point that particulate (soot) oxidation can be self-sustained in the filter. In the present work the development path of an advanced catalytic filter technology is presented. Full scale optimized Catalytic Diesel Particulate Filters (CDPFs) are tested in the exhaust of a light-duty modern diesel engine in line with a Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC). The management of the DOC-CDPF emission control system is facilitated by a virtual soot sensor in order to ensure energy-efficient operation of the emission control system.

To ensure overall optimisation of heavy duty engine performance (with the respect of NOx&PM future European and US emissions standards), the use of a high efficiency NOx after-treatment system such as a NOx trap appears to be necessary. But running in rich conditions, even for a short time, leads to a large increase of particulate emissions so that a particulate filter is required. A first investigation with a NOx-trap only has been carried out to evaluate and optimise the storage, destorage and reduction phases from the NOx conversion efficiency and fuel penalty trade-off. The equivalence ratio level, the fuel penalty and the temperature level of the NOx-trap have been shown as a key parameter. Respective DPF and LNA locations have been studied. The configuration with the NOx-trap upstream provides the best NOx / fuel penalty trade-off since it allows NOx slip reduction and does not disturb the rich pulses.

ELEVATE (European Low Emission V4 Automotive Two-stroke Engine) was a research project part funded by the European Commission to design and develop a compact and efficient gasoline two-stroke automotive engine. Five partners were involved in the project, IFP (Institut Français Du Pétrole) who were the project leaders, Lotus, Opcon (Autorotor and SEM), Politecnico di Milano and Queen's University Belfast. The general project targets were to achieve Euro 3 emissions compliance without DeNOx catalisation, and a power output of 120 kW at 5000 rev/min with maximum torque of 250 Nm at 2000 rev/min. Specific targets were a 15% reduction in fuel consumption compared to its four-stroke counterpart and a size and weight advantage over the four-stroke diesel with significant reduction in particulate and NOx emissions. This paper describes the design philosophy of the engine as well as the application of the various partner technologies used.

The relative contribution of two wheelers to local atmosphere pollution is increasing more and more due to ultra low emissions regulation applied to other vehicle as cars. In 1999, the first European emissions regulations for 50cc mopeds and scooters appeared (Euro I) and will also become more and more severe by the time. Euro II (2002) level will correspond to the next step. IFP has developed a simplified Direct Injection technology, named SCIP™, derived from the well known IAPAC® technology without the need of additional camshaft. This technology has been integrated with the MC500 Engine Management System developed by SAGEM for the growing 2-wheelers application. The final simple and cheap product is therefore well adapted to small displacement 2-stroke engines as 50cc engine for 2-wheelers application. This paper presents the development of a 50 cc scooter engine using SCIP™ technology and the calibration of the MC500 System to achieve Euro II regulation.

In this paper, a methodology is presented to study the influence of thermal aging on catalytic DPF performance using small scale coated filter samples and side-stream reactor technology. Different mixed oxide catalytic coating families are examined under realistic engine exhaust conditions and under fresh and thermally aged state. This methodology involves the determination of filter physical (flow resistance under clean and soot loaded conditions and filtration efficiency) and chemical properties (reactivity of catalytic coating towards direct soot oxidation). Thermal aging led to sintering of catalytic nanoparticles and to changes in the structure of the catalytic layer affecting negatively the filter wall permeability, the clean filtration efficiency and the pressure drop behavior during soot loading. It also affected negatively the catalytic soot oxidation activity of the catalyzed samples.

The paper deals with experimental activity concerning ATAC, which, in two-stroke gasoline engines, helps solving the crucial problem of combustion instability at light loads. ATAC consists of employing the energy of residual gas to prime an efficient combustion. The research is aimed to give further insight into ATAC mechanism both by visualisation of the combustion process and by examination of the influence which relevant parameters like air-fuel ratio, engine speed, compression ratio, scavenging passage design have on ATAC operation. Several results have been acquired and collected hitherto. A part of them are shown and discussed in this paper.

The IAPAC® Direct fuel Injection (DI) system, developed by IFP, has already well proven its capability to reduce pollutants emissions and fuel consumption of 2-stroke engines for both 2-wheeler and marine outboard application. This crankcase Compressed Air Assisted Fuel Injection process allowing the introduction of the fuel separately from the scavenging air, minimizes the fuel short-circuiting and has shown its potential on various prototype demonstrators. This paper presents the development and pre-industrialization work performed to apply this concept to an SELVA Marine 2-cylinder 50 HP outboard 2-stroke engine. A standard carbureted engine has been converted to a IAPAC® prototype engine by mainly modifying the cylinder head. Then, this prototype engine has been calibrated, tested and optimized on the dyno test bench to comply with future emissions regulation while keeping similar power output than the reference carbureted engine.

Diesel urban buses and refuse trucks are part of the particulate emissions sources that affect city air quality. In order to reduce particulate pollutant emissions, a development program has been carried out based on a Euro 4 engine with a DPF technology. Currently, for Euro 4 compliance, SCR is the favoured technology. To avoid a completely new development, the Exoclean™ DPF system was located after the SCR. Catalyst. The severe operating conditions and the location of the DPF necessitated the development of an active system based on the association of a DPF and a Fuel-Borne Catalyst. A Renault Trucks MD9 engine was used. This work was funded by ADEME (French Agency for Environment and Energy Management). Due to severe stop and go duty cycles and the interest to fit the DPF downstream of the SCR, this study shows the benefit of using an active DPF with an FBC to ensure full regeneration even at low temperatures.

Compliance with future emission standards for diesel powered vehicles is likely to require the deployment of emission control devices, such as particulate filters and DeNOx converters. Diesel emission control is merging with powertrain management and requires deep knowledge of emission control component behavior to perform effective system level integration and optimization. The present paper focuses on challenges associated with a critical component of diesel emission control systems, namely the diesel particulate filter (DPF), and provides a fundamental description of the transient filtration/loading, catalytic/NO2-assisted regeneration and ash-induced aging behavior of DPF's.

In an optical accessible 4-stroke engine laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) imaging measurements of fuel tracer (3-pentanone) and formaldehyde were performed during the compression stroke and combustion. Formaldehyde (HCHO) is intermediately present at high concentrations within the cool flame and is burned later on when the “hot” combustion proceeds. It can be used as an internally generated tracer to observe the boundaries of the hot combustion zones. Despite the fact that a frequency-tripled Nd:YAG laser excites only weak transitions in the HCHO molecule, the high concentration (several thousands ppm) provide for sufficient signal intensity when detecting fluorescence above 395 nm. Using formaldehyde LIF, auto-ignition (occurring close to 356°ca) and the further development of combustion was observed.

The purpose of the 4-SPACE (4-Stroke Powered gasoline Auto-ignition Controlled combustion Engine) industrial research project is to research and develop an innovative controlled auto-ignition combustion process for lean burn automotive gasoline 4-stroke engines application. The engine concepts to be developed could have the potential to replace the existing stoichiometric / 3-way catalyst automotive spark ignition 4-stroke engines by offering the potential to meet the most stringent EURO 4 emissions limits in the year 2005 without requiring DeNOx catalyst technology. A reduction of fuel consumption and therefore of corresponding CO2 emissions of 15 to 20% in average urban conditions of use, is expected for the « 4-SPACE » lean burn 4-stroke engine with additional reduction of CO emissions.

Evolving marine diesel emission regulations drive significant reductions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. There is, therefore, considerable interest to develop and validate Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) converters for marine diesel NOx emission control. Substrates in marine applications need to be robust to survive the high sulfur content of marine fuels and must offer cost and pressure drop benefits. In principle, extruded honeycomb substrates of higher cell density offer benefits on system volume and provide increased catalyst area (in direct trade-off with increased pressure drop). However higher cell densities may become more easily plugged by deposition of soot and/or sulfate particulates, on the inlet face of the monolithic converter, as well as on the channel walls and catalyst coating, eventually leading to unacceptable flow restriction or suppression of catalytic function.

Future diesel emission control systems have to effectively operate under non-conventional low-temperature combustion engine operating conditions. In this work the research and development efforts for the realization of a Multi-Functional catalyst Reactor (MFR) for the exhaust of the upcoming diesel engines is presented. This work is based on recent advances in catalytic nano-structured materials synthesis and coating techniques. Different catalytic functionalities have been carefully distributed in the filter substrate microstructure for maximizing the direct and indirect (NO2-assisted) soot oxidation rate, the HC and CO conversion efficiency as well as the filtration efficiency. Moreover, a novel filter design has been applied to enable internal heat recovery capability by the implementation of heat exchange between the outlet and the inlet to the filter flow paths.

As different Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) designs and media are becoming widely adopted, research efforts in the characterization of their influence on particle emissions intensify. In the present work the influence of a Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC) and five different Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) under steady state and transient engine operating conditions on the particulate and gaseous emissions of a common-rail diesel engine are studied. An array of particle measuring instrumentation is employed, in which all instruments simultaneously measure from the engine exhaust. Each instrument measures a different characteristic/metric of the diesel particles (mobility size distribution, aerodynamic size distribution, total number, total surface, active surface, etc.) and their combination assists in building a complete characterization of the particle emissions at various measurement locations: engine-out, DOC-out and DPF-out.

In recent years advanced computational tools of Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) regeneration have been developed to assist in the systematic and cost-effective optimization of next generation particulate trap systems. In the present study we employ an experimentally validated, state-of-the-art multichannel DPF simulator to study the regeneration process over the entire spatial domain of the filter. Particular attention is placed on identifying the effect of inlet cones and boundary conditions, filter can insulation and the dynamics of “hot spots” induced by localized external energy deposition. Comparison of the simulator output to experiment establishes its utility for describing the thermal history of the entire filter during regeneration. For effective regeneration it is recommended to maintain the filter can Nusselt number at less than 5.

Current progress in the development of diesel engines substantially contributes to the reduction of NOx and Particulate Matter (PM) emissions but will not succeed to eliminate the application of Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) in the future. In the past we have introduced a Multi-Functional Reactor (MFR) prototype, suitable for the abatement of the gaseous and PM emissions of the Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) engine operation. In this work the performance of MFR prototypes under both conventional and advanced combustion engine operating conditions is presented. The effect of the MFR on the fuel penalty associated to the filter regeneration is assessed via simulation. Special focus is placed on presenting the performance assessment in combination with the existing differences in the morphology and reactivity of the soot particles between the different modes of diesel engine operation (conventional and advanced). The effect of aging on the MFR performance is also presented.

To comply with ever more stringent emission limits, engineers are studying and optimising gasoline engine start-up and warm-up phases. Secondary air injection (SAI) represents one option to reduce emissions by post-oxidizing products of a rich combustion like HC, CO and H2. With this approach, the faster catalytic converter light-off allowed by the increase in exhaust temperature leads to a significant HC emissions reduction. All the mechanisms involved in post oxidation downstream of the exhaust valve are not well-known. In order to achieve substantial improvements, various SAI strategies were studied with a conventional PFI gasoline engine. Tests have been carried out both on steady-state running conditions and on transient warm-up phases at engine test bench. Various specific experimental devices and methodologies were developed. For example, the use of fast HC and temperature measurements is coupled with exhaust gas flow rate modeled with system simulation.