THE COST-EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS OF TURBULENT STRUCTURES IN METALLIC HONEYCOMB SUBSTRATES

Abstract:

In India, China and the entire ASEAN Region, the 2-wheeler will continue to be a major commuting mode and the demand for 2-wheelers will continue to expand whilst emissions from these vehicles will continue to remain a cause of environmental concern. Governments in the region will continue to tighten emission legislation which will demand cost-effective emission control technologies.

Modern engine technologies using optimized carburetion, fuel Injection and advanced combustion methods coupled with the latest after treatment technologies based on Turbulent Flow Metallic Honeycomb Substrates for Catalytic Converters are seeing success in delivering higher demands on catalytic efficiencies and ever increasing Precious Metal prices.

Highly efficient turbulent metallic substrate technologies such as the TS (Transverse) Structures, LS (Longitudinal) Structures, PE (Perforated) Structures in standard metallic honeycomb substrates transform the a laminar exhaust flow to a turbulent flow, significantly improving exhaust gas mixing behaviour in the catalyst, resulting in improved catalytic activity and pollutant conversion. These technologies can be exploited to reduce catalyst size & volume thereby resulting in lowered system costs due to the reduce use of costly precious metals.

This paper presents an overview of worldwide 2-wheeler legislations, engine technology approaches, and an analysis of different turbulent metallic substrates for catalyst performance. Comparison between laminar flow substrates and the turbulent flow ones under Indian (IDC) and European (ECE R40) driving cycles along with the influence of catalyst volume and different coatings will be discussed in depth. The work shows that turbulent catalysts with lower volume and lower precious metal usage homologated for IDC can improve CO emission behaviour by more than 60%. Improvement of HC+NOx of about 10% could be realized in-spite of catalyst working under excess air.