Meeting Emissions Regs with Gasoline Filters

This year, Euro 6c emissions regulations come into effect and in 2020, China 6 regs kick in. 

One consequence of this is that several OEMs have decided that it is necessary to equip vehicles with particulate filters—and these are gasoline-powered, not diesel engines.

One of the types of engines where these filters are particularly advantageous as regards meeting the requirements is the gasoline direct-injection engine. While these engines provide good performance and good fuel economy, comparatively speaking, they also have a consequence of producing fine particulates in their exhaust.

So enter the gasoline-particulate filter.

One supplier of filters is Dow Corning Corp. (corning.com), which produces “DuraTrap GC” filters featuring a patented cordierite-based material composition with an engineered ceramic microstructure designed to trap fine particulates while maintaining engine performance with low engine back pressure.

The demand for the filters is so high that Corning is undertaking a $100-million facility expansion program in two plants, one in Germany and one in China, to expand production of its DuraTrap filters.

In its Kaiserslautern plant, where it has been producing diesel particulate filters since 2011, it is expanding its overall footprint with new production lines and equipment for the gasoline filter production. The entire expansion will be complete early in 2018.

“In Shanghai,” says Wu Dan, general manager, China, Corning Environmental Technologies, “we are adding capacity to lead production of gasoline particulate filters for local Chinese and global automakers.” 

The Shanghai plant has been producing light-duty substrates and filters since 2001, and the expansion, which is also to be complete by early 2018, adds the DuraTrap production capability.