Development of a Reactor for the Testing of Diesel Particulate Filters

Diesel engines have the highest efficiency of all combustion engines and release significantly less CO₂ emissions than gasoline engines, but emit large quantities of particulate matter, or soot. To address the environmental and health dangers of soot, emissions standards for diesel engines have been implemented, and are becoming more stringent, worldwide. The use of diesel particulate filters (DPFs) has become a standard in diesel systems, since they can eliminate up to 99% of soot from diesel exhaust. To release the soot that becomes trapped in the filter, elevated temperatures are needed to convert the soot into CO₂. These elevated temperatures require energy from the engine that reduces the overall efficiency and leads to an increase in fuel consumption. With the use of a glass catalyst, the temperature required for regeneration can be lowered and increase the efficiency of the diesel engine.

To date, there have been no studies done on a glass catalyst, or any similar material, in a diesel environment. Diesel environments are unique due to their elevated temperatures, gas composition, and humidity level. It is unknown how this environment would affect the behavior of the glass catalyst.

This thesis describes development of a reactor for testing reduced-sized DPFs to examine the behavior of the glass catalyst in a simulated diesel environment. Factors of a diesel exhaust environment such as high temperatures and humidity will affect the degradation of the glass catalyst, which will in turn affect the catalytic activity. The reactor will be capable to simulating a 100,000 miles of engine use lifetime for the catalyst to characterize how this alters the catalyst. The reactor includes a three-zone furnace, a humidification loop, a soot generator, mass flow controllers for the gas flow, and a LabVIEW program to interface all of these components.