Nonthermal aftertreatment of diesel engine exhaust

摘要

The ultimate objective of this work has been to develop a nonthermal plasma process to reduce NO(sub x) in diesel exhaust gas. A secondary objective has been to study the possibility of particulate matter (soot) reduction by the same technique. The early work revealed a fundamental difficulty with this NO(sub x) reduction approach in the gas environment of the diesel engine exhaust. These observations necessitated a thorough study of the unfavorable chemistry in the hope that knowledge of the chemical mechanism would offer an opportunity to make the approach useful for NO(sub x) reduction. Whereas fundamental understanding of the mechanism has been obtained, the authors have not found any measure that would make the approach meet its original objective.