Power plants – Internal combustion engine with treatment or handling of... – By electrolysis – electrical discharge – electrical field – or...
Patent
1998-06-04
2000-05-09
Denion, Thomas
Power plants
Internal combustion engine with treatment or handling of...
By electrolysis, electrical discharge, electrical field, or...
60311, 42218604, F01N 300
Patent
active
060586982
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a device for purifying the exhaust gas of an internal combustion engine.
BACKGROUND ART
On internal combustion engines, particularly car engines, the exhaust gas produced by combustion of the fuel in the engine contains pollutant or toxic gases and vapours due to imperfect combustion of the hydrocarbons and to the additives used in the fuel to improve the heat cycle, and is fed into and discharged from an exhaust pipe normally fitted at the end with a silencer for absorbing the peak sound waves and deadening the overall noise produced by the exhaust gas.
As is known, car engine fuels--petrol, L.P.G. or methane in spark-ignition combustion engines, and gas oil in diesel engines--comprise hydrocarbons of the general chemical formula CnHm, i.e. having more or less large carbon and hydrogen molecules of various atom arrangements. The atmospheric air drawn into the engine for combustion is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour--the latter varying according to the degree of humidity--and also contains other gases and vapours depending, obviously, on the degree of pollution of the atmosphere in which the engine is operated.
If the oxidation process were perfect, the chemical reaction would be: actual practice, however, internal combustion engines also emit unburnt hydrocarbon vapours, other noxious gases such as nitric oxide, and toxic gases such as carbon monoxide.
The composition and percentage of toxic or noxious exhaust gas components vary considerably from one engine to another, and the percentage is particularly high in traffic jams or particular atmospheric conditions in which the gas settles and cannot be dispersed readily into the atmosphere. In certain urban areas, high-molecular-weight gas, such as carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon vapours, forms a layer which concentrates infrared rays and results in the so-called greenhouse effect responsible for sudden changes in weather.
Moreover, to improve compression in the cylinders and prevent spontaneous ignition of the mixture, spark-ignition combustion engines employ petrol containing antiknock additives, in particular tetraethyllead in leaded, so-called red, petrol, which is notoriously toxic. To eliminate the noxious effect of tetraethyllead, unleaded or so-called green petrol has recently been developed, in which the antiknock additive comprises an aromatic hydrocarbon MTBE (methyl-ter-butyl-ether) or benzene. Like most unburnt hydrocarbons and polymers, however, unleaded petrol is cancerogenic and should therefore only be used in engines equipped with a catalyzed muffler featuring a lambda probe and in which the unburnt hydrocarbons from the cylinders are burnt.
In diesel engines, in which fuel combustion occurs spontaneously by injecting the fuel into the combustion chamber at the compression stroke, combustion is frequently incomplete for various reasons--fuel supply, injector settings, engine speed and load, warm-up operation of the engine--so that the exhaust gas is more or less dark in colour, due to waste and/or various unburnt hydrocarbons forming the so-called "particulate" of the gas.
On modern spark-ignition combustion engines equipped with catalyzed mufflers, and diesel engines equipped with electronic-control injectors, toxic emissions have been greatly reduced, but absolutely no reduction has been achieved in the emission of pollutant substances, such as CO.sub.2.
From document U.S. Pat. No. 3,983,021, it is known a nitrogen oxide decomposition device for the exhaust gas of internal combustion engines, wherein the gas is conveyed to a dielectric tubular pipe having on its outer surface a conductive covering and containing an inner electrode in form of a cylindrical bar. The electrode and the covering are connected to a high voltage generator to provide a plasma discharge into the pipe, in which high surface area packing material is disposed. The nitrogen oxide are decomposed by the the ionizing action of the discharge and by the absorption action of the material.
From document U.S.
REFERENCES:
patent: 3818678 (1974-06-01), Gothard
patent: 3846637 (1974-11-01), Gettinger
patent: 3979193 (1976-09-01), Sikich
patent: 3983021 (1976-09-01), Henis
patent: 4362016 (1982-12-01), Papadopulos
patent: 4587807 (1986-05-01), Suzuki
patent: 4945721 (1990-08-01), Cornwell et al.
patent: 5822980 (1998-10-01), Chen
Coral Claudio
Coral Luciano
Coral Nevio
Coral S.p.A.
Denion Thomas
Tran Binh
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