Tenneco Automotive and GE have reached a key milestone in the development of a fuel system which uses a mixture of gasoline and ethanol (E85) to combat NOx emissions according to its engineers.
The new Hydrocarbon Lean NOx Catalyst (HC-LNC) technology uses a dosing of 85% diesel fuel and 15% E85 solution in the exhaust stream to catalyse NOx emissions into nitrogen and water.
William Kernick, vice president of technology ventures for GE, said: “E85 opens up a variety of diesel engine markets where a small on-board tank of readily available E85 will supply the reductant. This has real potential to provide a simple solution to meet the [EPA2010] NOx regulations.”
According to a spokesperson for Tenneco said the new system achieved NOx conversions of between 85-95%. Tenneco has estimated that the new system will be ready for commercial on-road usage by 2012; however the success of the technology relies on the development of an extensive E85 infrastructure, the viability of which is debatable.
One comment
Tomas Benjamin
Posted %A %B %e%q, %Y at %I:%M %p | Permalink
this is interesting…tell me more