Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Natural gas is an attractive alternative fuel for the transportation sector, especially heavy duty vehicles. Like all internal combustion engines, they produce undesirable emissions, and therefore the purpose of this research is to investigate the catalytic mitigation of the emissions from a natural gas fuelled internal combustion engine. These emissions are the subject of increasingly severe government regulation that mandate strict limits on the amounts of NO, hydrocarbons and CO that may be emitted. For a natural gas engine, the hydrocarbon emissions are mostly methane, which is the most difficult hydrocarbon to combust. We intend to conduct a detailed investigation into the use of modified Pd and Pt-Pd catalysts for this application, with particular emphasis placed on the activity and long term deactivation. We will consider real and synthetic exhaust gas mixtures, and include tests on real engines. Catalyst characterisation will be a key part of the investigation, which will be used to gain an increased insight into the fundamental catalyst composition. CNG fuelled engines typically have relatively low exhaust gas temperatures. To achieve auto-thermal operation at these temperatures, a thermal management system may be implemented. Typically this design would be based on a recuperative flow pattern. Reactor simulation will be used to develop potentially attractive converter designs, which will be then be tested on real engines. The final result is expected to be a practical design for a catalytic converter for a natural gas engine.