Experimental Investigation into the Effects of Four-Way Catalytic Converter on Four Stroke Diesel Engine Emissions

Abstract

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is increasing day by day. The emission from vehicle exhaust is one of the main sources of this pollution. As a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles lead to environmental pollution and global warming. Since CO2 emissions have an impact on global climate change, remedies should be introduced to reduce pollution. The carbon capture and storage is the mostly proposed method for controlling carbon dioxide emission. This can be achieved with the use of CO2 adsorbents. The existing catalytic converters in vehicles fail to control carbon dioxide emission to atmosphere. Under no load conditions, the CO2 emission is increased by 234% while using three-way catalytic converter. This is because of the catalytic effect. The reactions that take place inside the catalytic converter leads in the excess emission of carbon dioxide to atmosphere. The scope of currently available CO2 adsorbents and their application in four-way catalytic converter are brought out here. The activated carbon and molsieve 13 X are used as CO2 adsorbents. Both the adsorbents are used in this work and analyzed. When activated carbon is used there is a decrease in CO2 emission by 86.91% and for molsieve 13 x, it is 69.16%, under no load condition. Thus it is found that activated carbon is 17.75% more effective than molsieve 13 x in reducing CO2 emission. The adsorption capacity of adsorbents decreases with respect to the increase in temperature. Four-way catalytic converter is effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions by the adsorption technique. So three-way catalytic converters can be superseded by four-way catalytic converters in future.