Development of Diesel Particulate Filter Made of Porous Metal

Pollution is worsening in cities. The exhaust gas from vehicles is the main cause of air pollution in cities. The major drawback of the diesel engine is the Particulate Matter (PM) contained in the exhaust fumes which is also said to lead to cancer. For about 20 years many tests have been conducted in order to reduce PM in diesel exhaust gas. However the exhaust gas in present diesel engines contains a significant amount of PM. This is because there is no practical material for the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF). Conventional ceramic materials have problems such as cracking and melting during regeneration and conventional metal materials lack adequate corrosion resistance for practical use.

The authors present a new type of DPF made of metal porous matter (Celmet) which is designed with a thermal construction and simple control system in order to solve the problem of diesel exhaust gas. As metal porous matter has low pressure loss per unit filter area during filtering, two-cylinder filters have similar trapping performance to the honeycomb type filter such as pressure loss and trapping efficiency.

In this paper, 2800∼3400cc diesel engines were used. Then a cycle of collection and regeneration with an electric heater and 12V battery was performed under several condition on the engine bench and trapping efficiency and pressure loss were measured. It was confirmed that this new type DPF has good practical use in automobiles. Tests on forklifts were also performed. In a simple control system, this DPF can be applied to practical use. It is trouble-free for 6 months. The total performance of DPF for vehicles such as forklifts and heavy duty vehicles and the possibilities for other practical uses was mainly discussed.