Diesel Particle Emission Reduction by a Particle Oxidation Catalyst

State-of-art light duty diesel vehicles and heavy duty diesel engines are utilized in studying the effect of a novel particle oxidation catalyst (POC^®) on particle emission. In addition to the regulated particulate matter (PM) emission measurement, a real time mass emission and particle number size distribution measurements are utilized in testing. The results show that the particle oxidation catalyst can have a significant decreasing effect on the diesel exhaust particle emissions. For example, in light duty applications PM reductions of 55-61% were achieved over the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) when using a POC of same size as the engine volume. The usage of a DOC in combination with the POC ensures proper regeneration of the POC substrate. The size distribution measurements revealed that the particle number collection efficiency for smaller particles i.e. the nanoparticles was very high, being close to 100 %.