Two and Three Wheeler industry in the Asian region is growing at a rapid pace, as commuting by these vehicles is more affordable and efficient, specially in the developing nations. However, tightening of emission legislations, aimed at creating a cleaner and healthier environment, has led to increasingly demanding efforts required in making more efficient engines / vehicles and also focus on effective after-treatment systems. Catalytic converters, being the most preferred option for after-treatment solutions, play an important role in achieving the desired end results.
Over the past several years, monolithic catalytic converters with laminar flow profile were being used by automotive industry. These catalytic converters though create some turbulence at the inlet, make the majority of the rest of the flow laminar, thereby reducing the mass transfer of the exhaust gas components to the effective catalytic sites.
Turbulent flow technology has been successfully developed more recently with metal substrates to get the required turbulent flow characteristics in the substrate channels. The advantages of this technology include better conversion efficiencies, lesser volume of the catalysts - and hence less packaging space requirements, lower system costs etc.
The present paper deals with the work done on two models of two wheelers and one model of three wheeler using Turbulent Structure metal substrates. On one two wheeler, it was possible to optimize the overall system cost by switching over to Turbulent Structure from the earlier Laminar Structure, thereby totally eliminating a start up catalyst used in the earlier design. Benefits on performance using Turbulent Flow technology also demonstrated on the other two wheeler and a three wheeler.
All the emission evaluation results with Turbulent Flow technology are presented in this paper, along with benefits on the cost and performance.