Abstract
The impact of different types of diesel particulate matter (PM) and different sampling conditions on the wall deposition and early soot cake build up within diesel particulate filters has been investigated. The measurements were made possible by a newly developed Diesel Exhaust Filtration Analysis (DEFA) system in which in-situ diesel exhaust filtration can be reproduced with in small cordierite wafer disks, which are essentially thin sections of a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) wall. The different types of PM were generated from selected engine operating conditions of a single-cylinder heavy-duty diesel engine. Two filtration velocities 4 and 8 cm/s were used to investigate PM deep-bed filtration processes. The loaded wafers were then analyzed in a thermal mass analyzer that measures the Soluble Organic Fraction (SOF) as well as soot and sulfate fractions of the PM. In addition, the soot residing in the wall of the wafer was examined under an optical microscope illuminated with Ultraviolet light and an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (E-SEM) to determine the bulk soot penetration depth for each loading condition.
It was found that higher filtration velocity results in higher wall loading with approximately the same penetration depth into the wall. PM characteristics impacted both wall loading and soot cake layer characteristics. Results from imaging analysis indicate that soot the penetration depth into the wall was affected more by PM size (which changes with engine operating conditions) rather than filtration velocity.
