Investigation of the performance of after-treatment devices on diesel and biodiesel particles

© 2018 Combustion Institute. All Rights Reserved. The performance of after-treatment devices (ATDs) for diesel and biodiesel particulate matter were investigated by measurement and comparison of nanoparticle concentration before and after the ATD, which was mounted on a diesel engine. The engine was run with both diesel and coconut biodiesel. The loading of the diesel particulate filter (DPF) can be divided in two stages, (i) initial loading, beginning with a clean filter, and (ii) final loading, when the DPF has been loaded for 3 hours, and where the filtration efficiency was stable. The results show that, during the initial loading, the biodiesel particle number concentration (PN) was higher than the PN from neat diesel, while the particle mass concentration (PM) was lower than that of diesel. However, in the final loading process, the PN and PM of biodiesel particles were both lower than for neat diesel. The filtration efficiency of ATDs is different for diesel and biodiesel particles. The performance of the ATD was better with neat diesel fuel as compared to biodiesel. This would suggest that a more detailed study is needed to understand the interaction of ATDs with particles being produced by combustion of new and emerging biodiesel fuels.