Particulate Trap Technology for Light Duty Vehicles with a New Regeneration Strategy

A particulate trap with combined regeneration has been developed for use in light duty vehicles with diesel engines. This new system was tested first on an engine test rig. On-road vehicle tests are going on since August 1998. The results obtained clearly demonstrate the feasibility of this system. With this system trap regeneration has to be ensured under worst case conditions (exhaust gas temperature<400° C). To meet this requirement electrical heating in combination with a fuel-borne catalyst is applied. Different filter materials such as cordierite wall flow and silicon carbide monoliths were tested on the engine test rig. The paper reports on results from the engine test rig as well as from on-road vehicle testing. An overview about pre-heating and regeneration examples are given and energy balances are presented.