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Pollution is worsening in cities. The exhaust gas from vehicles is the main cause of air pollution in cities. The major drawback of the diesel engine is the Particulate Matter (PM) contained in the exhaust fumes which is also said to lead to cancer. For about 20 years many tests have been conducted in order to reduce PM in diesel exhaust gas. However the exhaust gas in present diesel engines contains a significant amount of PM. This is because there is no practical material for the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF). Conventional ceramic materials have problems such as cracking and melting during regeneration and conventional metal materials lack adequate corrosion resistance for practical use. The authors present a new type of DPF made of metal porous matter (Celmet) which is designed with a thermal construction and simple control system in order to solve the problem of diesel exhaust gas.

The high reliability silicon nitride sintered body and the mirror finish grinding machining technique have been developed, which improved fuel efficiency by reducing weight and friction loss of the valve systems. This ceramics, consists of finer grains (mean grain size:1-3μm) has high strength (σ 3b=1600MPa) and high Weibull modulus (m>20). In the case of motoring test by using this ceramics as the cam follower of the valve systems, it has a durability of more than 10,000rpm., which is approx. 30% higher than that of conventional silicone nitride, against the impact load to which the cam followers were subjected at occurrence of valve bouncing.