New Design for Efficient Diesel Particulate Trap Regeneration

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2004

Department

Department of Chemical Engineering

Abstract

Using numerical simulations shows that particulate trap regeneration does not occur below a certain critical inlet temperature, 679 K, for a typical diesel exhaust mass flow rate of 0.0523 kg/s. A new bypass design for particulate trap regeneration has been studied, where the exhaust flow is divided into several channels, which results in a smaller flow rate in each particulate filter. This reduces the critical inlet temperature by 20 K to 40 K, depending on the number of channels, and allows for improved regeneration efficiency with low electric energy consumption. In addition, a zero-order analytical estimate for the ignition time is also developed, given by u ig = 2.50/ξ + ln|ri| - 0.344, where uig is a dimensionless ignition time, ri is a reduced temperature, and ξ depends upon feed temperature, flow rate, oxygen concentration, and initial deposit thickness. An optimal design using three bypass channels is obtained by theory and simulation.

Publication Title

AIChE Journal

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