CFD Study of Sensitivity Parameters in SCR NOx Reduction Modeling 2014-01-2346

The Diesel engine combustion process results in harmful exhaust emissions, mainly composed of Particulate Matter (PM), Hydro Carbon (HC), Carbon monoxide (CO) and Nitrogen Oxides (NO_x). Several technologies have been developed in the past decades to control these diesel emissions. One of the promising and well matured technology of reducing NO_x is to implement Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) using ammonia (NH₃) as the reducing agent. For an effective SCR system, the aqueous urea solutions should be fully decomposed into ammonia and it should be well distributed across the SCR. In the catalyst, all the ammonia is utilized for NO_x reduction process. In the design stage, it is more viable to implement Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for design iterations to determine an optimized SCR system based on SCR flow distribution. And in later stage, experimental test is required to predict the after-treatment system performance based on NO_x reduction.

The SCR model predicts the NH₃ formation from urea decomposition and it is quantified at the SCR inlet, whereas experimental data involves the NO_x reduction process. In order to validate the numerical predictions, the modeling needs to include surface reactions happening in the SCR catalyst bed. There are many factors that affect NO_x conversion process, such as exhaust temperature, NO₂/NO_x ratio, catalyst coating, oxidation, etc. To model SCR Kinetics, various input parameters are required and also the reaction process needs to be well defined. The objective of this work is to conduct urea SCR spray modeling studies to focus on these input parameters and to observe its influence over NO_x reduction process.