Diesel Particulate Filters – Field Experiences with Current Systems and Factors that will define Future Designs

Authors

Dr.-Ing. G. Cipolla, Dipl.-Ing. A. Sanguedolce, Dr.-Ing. G. Boretto, Ph.D. B. Peters, General Motors Powertrain Europe, Turin

Year

2006

Print Info

Fortschritt-Berichte VDI, Reihe 12, Nr. 622

Summary

During the late 1990´s, a coalescence of technology in fuel systems, substrate materials and catalytic coatings created an opportunity to create robust, diesel particulate aftertreatment systems for lightduty diesel engines. Numerous research studies had highlighted multiple, alternative concepts for implementing particulate aftertreatment, but no volume production applications existed to serve as a selection guide. This situation provided development engineers with a double challenge, selection of a technical strategy and development of a new product without a set of historically defined requirements. The strategy selected for General Motors products in Europe was to use a coated, wallflow ceramic filter mounted underfloor along with an oxidation catalyst system. Regeneration is controlled by unique operation of the common rail fuel system. Package constrained system configurations have been developed to cover a wide range of vehicle applications with over 160 000 units produced since the first production applications in early 2004 through the end of 2005. The field experiences have validated that a successful technical strategy was selected. With the learnings from the current production particulate aftertreatment systems, recent materials developments, and the ability to integrate new configurations simultaneously with new vehicle architectures, evolutionary system designs are possible that have lower cost, are smaller, but retain the robustness necessary for “for life” solutions.

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