The tightening legislation in the on-road heavy-duty diesel area means that pollution control systems will soon be widely introduced on such engines. A number of different aftertreatment systems are currently being considered to meet the incoming legislation, including Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF), Diesel Oxidation Catalysts (DOC) and Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems.
Relatively little is known about the interactions between lubricant-derived species and such aftertreatment systems. This paper describes the results of an experimental program carried out to investigate these interactions within DPF, DOC and SCR systems on a state-of-the-art 9 litre engine.
The influence of lubricant composition and lube oil ash level was investigated on the different catalyst systems. In order to reduce costs and to speed up testing, test oil was dosed into the fuel. Tests without dosing lubricant into the fuel were also run.
Driving distances of up to 115,000 km (based on oil consumption) were simulated in these experiments. Following such treatments, no significant change in the activity of the CR-DPF oxidation catalyst, Diesel Oxidation Catalysts or SCR catalysts were observed. In each case, the distribution of oil-derived species was studied as a function of distance down the catalyst. It was found that the Ca, Zn and P were generally present in higher concentrations at the front of the catalyst, decreasing down the unit. In contrast, sulfur is distributed evenly throughout the length of each catalyst. This is because sulfur can be deposited from the gas phase and is more mobile on the catalyst surface.
Interestingly, when doping high ash oil into the fuel it was found that the back pressure of the DPF system increased rapidly. This is particularly important since it is known that used engine oil is sometimes poured back into the fuel tank for disposal. These results imply that this practice may strongly affect the efficiency of DPF devices.
This rapid increase in back pressure is a consequence of doping the fuel with the high ash oil, since operation of the engine with the high ash oil without doping, or with a low ash oil with doping, resulted in only a gradual increase in back pressure. In addition, the distribution of the ash in the filter was strongly affected when doping the high ash oil into the fuel, in that the ash was uniformly distributed down the length of the filter. In the other experiments carried out here, and in measurements of field-aged filters, the ash thickness increases with distance into the filter. These observations reveal that care needs to be taken when doping oil into the fuel to accelerate the observation of oil-derived effects in DPF systems.