Hydrocarbon traps and passive NOx adsorbers are newly developed catalytic materials used to reduce hydrocarbon and NOx emissions during engine “cold start”. Presently, they are plagued by degradation during use. In this project we are learning how they degrade with time and designing better materials that can resist the degradation modes we are discovering.
Ammonia selective catalytic reduction (NH3-SCR) is used in diesel engine aftertreatment systems to reduce NOx. However, their efficiency changes with time, due to hydrothermal aging and sulfur poisoning very easily. Our goal is to reduce emissions by better understanding these two deactivation conditions.
Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel, with lower CO, NOx and CO2 emissions. The growth of natural gas as a transportation fuel has several challenges, one of which is removing any unburned CH4 from the exhaust gas. The overarching project goal of this project is to develop understand, and test durable, structured catalysts with combined hydrocarbon, CO, and methane oxidation and NOx reduction activity.