SBIR Phase I: Low Cost Manufacturing of Pollution Control Substrates

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This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will investigate the use of novel manufacturing methods to fabricate porous ceramic substrates for reducing pollution from large diesel engines, and burners. Currently, these substrates are extruded, and are thus constrained in size, shape, and gas flow dynamics. As a result, extruded substrates require expensive catalysts, and do not easily scale to the largest, most polluting engines. This project will seek to develop a novel, environmentally benign, low cost manufacturing method to make large substrates. These substrates will have improved heat transfer and mass transfer properties, enabling the substrates to reach uncatalyzed operation temperatures quickly. The resulting exhaust mitigation systems will not rely on precious-metal catalysts, and thus be much lower cost than currently available products. This Phase I effort is directed toward testing, developing, and benchmarking a new manufacturing technology. These fabrication methods will leverage Errcive?s prior work on ultra-low cost raw materials to create an entirely new type of pollution mitigation product. The broader/commercial impacts of this research include: i) reducing air pollution, ii) developing advanced manufacturing technology, and iii) upcycling industrial waste into high value products. Criteria pollutants (e.g., particulate matter and NOx), are health hazards, cause premature melting in Boreal regions, and are strong climate forcing agents. Reducing the concentrations of criteria pollutants will result in a variety of positive outcomes, including improved air quality and overall population health, particularly near cities, rail yards, and ports. Additionally, recent studies have determined that PM and NOx may be among the top five global warming species. The atmospheric lifetime of PM (weeks) is much shorter than that of CO2 (decades). Thus, mitigating PM emissions may yield the fastest reduction in global warming. PM and NOx are emitted by virtually all of the world?s ~50 million diesel engines. Appreciably reducing overall emissions requires mitigating the world?s oldest, largest engines. However, the cost of currently available technology prohibits wide scale adoption. An economic exhaust mitigation system must be capable of cleaning these emissions streams at a cost that does not prevent its adoption. This project is directed toward creating a revolutionary system that combines high performance and low cost.