Inductive heating of exhaust aftertreatment system

Abstract: Heavy trucks are commonly powered by combustion engines running on diesel. Since these trucks often run on highways they rarely have to perform cold starts. Diesel engines take care of their NOx emissions through a process which uses the high temperatures of the exhaust gases together with urea, sprayed upon a mixer placed inside the exhaust pipes, to chemically react with the NOx over an SCR catalyst. With hybrid drivetrains increasing in popularity and their inherent increased frequency of cold starts the NOx treatment at cold starts has become a problem that needs to be solved since the reaction need to reach a critical temperature to occur. This study uses physics simulations and the building of a prototype to evaluate the possibilities of solving this problem by heating the mixer through induction heating. This report shows the possibility given a number of key changes that need to be made in order to allow for the mixer to heat the exhaust gases at cold starts.