Application of Catalyzed HC Trap on a Flex Fuel Vehicle 2015-36-0180

The working principle of the Hydrocarbon (HC) trap has been tested and demonstrated for a wide range of applications. In the Brazilian automotive market, the flex fuel vehicles represents more than 84 % of 2013 domestic production. The sugar cane fuel is known in the automotive industry as E100. The local ethanol (ETOH) has a different specification than the ethanol composition from other countries, as to mention the 4.9 % of water content. There is a growing concern by the government about the increase of environmental pollution caused by the unburned ethanol during vehicle cold starts, since its combustion products like alcohols, aldehydes and ketones all have a potential for ozone formation. Because of this concern, a new legislation will be enforced in the near future to reduce the ETOH unburned emission. With the improvement of wash coat technologies and zeolite layer durability, one potential solution to address the cold start emissions is the use of an HC trap catalyst. The first objective of this work is to compare the emissions level of a system with HC trap catalyst over the baseline results in a flex fuel vehicle, compatible with E100. Another expected outcome of this paper is to measure the HC conversion efficiency variation over the converter lifetime requirement. The third objective is to confirm the potential to reduce PGM loading in the close coupled (CC) and to measure the trapping efficiency of the zeolite layer combined with different three-way catalysts (TWC).