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The Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by all United Nation Member States in 2015 to ensure a sustainable planet and improved living conditions for everyone, everywhere. The light duty vehicle (LDV) fleet has exceeded one billion, with most vehicles being powered by internal combustion engines. Transportation is responsible for 60% of global fossil oil consumption. Air pollution is a large problem in cities often attributed to road transport. Vehicles comprise of over 70 material categories, indicating the complexity of sustainable material management. A hypothesis was established, that a sustainable engine (SE) could significantly reduce the environmental impact of transportation and, be realized by combining available technologies. A life cycle analysis was conducted on a 145 kW 2-litre Miller-cycle gasoline 48V-mild-hybrid engine with EU6d exhaust aftertreatment system (EATS), assessing seven mid-point categories.

Since several decades, passenger cars and light duty vehicles (LDV) with spark-ignited engines reach full pollutant conversion during warm up conditions; the major challenge has been represented by the cold start and warming up strategies. The focus on technology developments of exhaust after treatment systems have been done in the thermal management in order to reach the warm up conditions as soon as possible. A new challenge is now represented by the Real Driving Emission (RDE) Regulation as this bring more various, and not any longer cycle defined, cold start conditions. On the other hand, once the full conversion has been reached, it would be beneficial for many Exhaust After Treatment System (EATS) components, e.g. for overall durability if the exhaust gas temperature could be lowered. To take significant further emission steps, approaching e.g. zero emission concepts, we investigate the use of Electrical Heating Catalyst (EHC) also including pre-heating.

Commercial three way catalysts have limited capacity towards reducing NOx in the presence of excessive oxygen. This prevents lean-burn combustion concepts from meeting legislative emission standards. A solution towards decreasing NOx emissions in the presence of excess air is the use of a passive-SCR system. Under rich conditions ammonia is formed over an ammonia formation catalyst, the ammonia is stored in the SCR and in its turn reacts with the NOx under lean engine conditions. Here up-scaled Pt/Al2O3 and Pd/Al2O3 catalysts as well as a commercially Pd-Rh based three-way catalyst (TWC) are evaluated using both engine and further lab-scale tests. The purpose of these tests is to compare the ammonia production for the various catalysts under various lambda values and temperatures by means of engine and lab scale tests. The Pd/Al2O3 showed little sensitivity to temperature both under engine and lab scale experiments.