Regeneration of diesel particulate filters: Effect of renewable fuels

Abstract

Current trends in diesel transport anticipate that in the upcoming future a range of renewable fuels will be necessary to comply with emission and sustainability legislations. Exhaust after-treatment devices such as diesel particulate filters –DPFs– will have to operate satisfactorily with this pool of biofuels. In particular, DPF regeneration is crucial to cut the fuel penalty and guarantee an acceptable lifetime for this device. In the present work, an automotive diesel engine was run with fossil fuel and three renewable fuels: a conventional biodiesel, a fuel manufactured through Fischer-Tropsch –FT– process and a HVO biofuel. The DPF was loaded and regenerated through an active process with fuel post-injections. Additionally, soot samples were investigated with thermo-gravimetry (TGA) and calorimetry (DSC) to confirm whether these techniques obtain relevant information for explaining DPF behavior. Both methods proved that biodiesel leads to a more economical regeneration being the biodiesel soot, more reactive than the other samples, the main reason. DPF regenerations with paraffinic fuels (FT-derived and HVO) did not reveal strong differences compared to diesel, though TGA and DSC results suggested that soot from paraffinic biofuels is more reactive than that from diesel. The exhaust gas temperature and composition are behind this apparent discrepancy.