Discovery of New NOx Reduction Catalysts for CIDI Engines Using Combinatorial Techniques

摘要

This project for the discovery of new lean reduction NOx catalysts was initiated on August 16th, 2002 and is now into its fourth year. Several materials have already been identified as NOx reduction catalysts for possible future application. NOx reduction catalysts are a critical need in the North American vehicle market since these catalysts are needed to enable both diesels and lean gasoline engines to meet the 2007-2010 emission standards. Hydrocarbon selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is a preferred technology since it requires no infrastructure changes (as may be expected for urea SCR) and most likely has the simplest engine control strategy of the three proposed NOx reduction approaches. The use of fast throughput techniques and informatics greatly enhances the possibility of discovering new NOx reduction catalysts. Using fast throughput techniques this project has already screened over 3000 new materials and evaluates hundreds of new materials a month. Evaluating such a high number of new materials puts this approach into a very different paradigm than previous discovery approaches for new NOx reduction catalysts. With so much data on materials it is necessary to use statistical techniques to identify the potential catalysts and these statistical techniques are needed to optimize compositions of the multi-component materials that are identified under the program as possible new lean NOx catalysts. Several new materials have conversions in excess of 80% at temperatures above 300 C. That is more than twice the activity of previous HC SCR materials. These materials are candidates for emission control on heavy-duty systems (i.e.; over 8500 pounds gross weight). Tests of one of the downselected materials on an engine dynamometer show NOx reductions greater than 80% under some conditions even though the net NOx reductions on the HWFET and the US06 cycles were relatively low. The program is scheduled to continue until the end of the 2006 calendar year. Work in the final year will focus on continued discovery and identity of candidate materials, and also on refining the engine operating strategies to increase NOx reduction over a full engine cycle.