JUMPING THE SULEV HURDLE WITH 'CASCADES'

SULEV (super ultra low emission vehicle) is the emission standard established in California for the year 2004. German company Emitect has developed SuperFoil which is an extremely thin foil for the production of high-cell-density catalytic converters that can help to achieve SULEV values of 0.01 HC;1.0 CO;0.02 NOx and 0.01 PM grams per mile. Such converters have achieved impressive results in the FTP (Federal Test Procedure) test. A reduction in catalytic converter diameters improves the cold-start behaviour but leads to a high pressure loss that can decrease fuel consumption. This can be offset by using cascades of passive substrates or cascades with an electrically heated catalytic converter.