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Honda's Diesel Emissions Treatment Patent

Honda has received a patent for a diesel emissions treatment that in theory could allow diesel engines to meet 50 state emissions requirements. In Honda's treatment system, exhaust flows through a plasma reactor, or gaseous layer of electrically charged atoms, according to a U.S. patent obtained by Bloomberg News. That separates out harmful nitrogen oxides and forms nitrogen dioxide that's then reduced or absorbed by alkali metals and silver.

Sounds impressive, no? Well, it's been on the table for some time. A quick Google search shows a lot of technical presentations of Plasma-Facilitated Catalysis (or Plasma-Assisted Catalytic Reduction) from companies like Delphi Corp., Ford Motor Co., Eaton Corp. and Caterpillar. What would be impressive about Honda's development is if they can get past several hurdles. You need electricity to get plasma and that means you're going to take a fuel economy hit to generate that power. Generating and maintaining plasma is going to present additional cost, weight and complexity. In order to have this plasma system work, Honda will have to achieve unprecedented levels of powertrain system coordination. Diesel engines already command a price premium and this treatment process would more than likely add a significant amount to that princely sum.

Of course, the EPA would absolutely adore this system. The government is very grumpy about urea injection systems that DaimlerChrysler and others are suggesting because once you're out of urea, you start polluting and how are you going to motivate drivers to add urea when it does nothing for the performance of their vehicle? Manufacturers are trying to placate the government by building in "motivators" to ensure that drivers keep their urea tanks from running on empty. Perhaps the car will go into "limp home" mode after a certain number of miles of running without urea or functions in the car could be disabled. Something like Honda's plasma solution is much better in the government's eyes because in theory it will keep on scrubbing without the driver having to do anything to keep it working.

It all looks very promising to me. Imagine your Odyssey getting over 30MPG and still having plenty of power! Honda pulled a rabbit out of its hat years ago with Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion, so it could do it again by producing a cutting edge clean diesel.

Want to know more about that pretty graph? It's not from Honda but rather my homies over at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Check out this article (you've got to scoot down to where it talks about cleaning up diesel emissions) for the 411.

From Bloomberg via Autoblog