Although the urea-SCR technology exhibits high NO
reduction efficiency over a wide range of temperatures among the lean NO
reduction technologies, further improvement in low-temperature performance is required to meet the future emission standards and to lower the system cost. In order to improve the catalyst technologies and optimize the system performance, it is critical to understand the reaction mechanisms and catalyst behaviors with respect to operating conditions. Urea-SCR catalysts exhibit poor NO
reduction performance at low-temperature operating conditions (T ≺ 150°C). We postulate that the poor performance is either due to NH₃ storage inhibition by species like hydrocarbons or due to competitive adsorption between NH₃ and other adsorbates such as H₂O and hydrocarbons in the exhaust stream. In this paper we attempt to develop one-dimensional models to characterize inhibition and competitive adsorption in Fe-zeolite-based urea-SCR catalysts based on bench reactor experiments. We further use the competitive adsorption (CA) model to develop a standard SCR model based on previously identified kinetics. Simulation results indicate that the CA model predicts catalyst outlet NO and NH₃ concentrations with minimal root mean square error.