A Two-Time-Scale Infinite-Adsorption Model of Three Way Catalytic Converters During the Warm-Up Phase1

New regulations for emission control require the improvement of the system composed by spark ignition internal combustion engine and three-way catalytic converter (TWC). In particular, an important problem is to minimize harmful emissions during the transient warm-up phase where the TWC is not working yet and, hence, a large amount of pollutants are emitted in the air. Toward this goal we present a dynamical thermo-chemical TWC model simple enough for the design and test of warm-up control strategies. The model is obtained through an asymptotic approximation of a more detailed model, i.e., by letting the adsorption coefficient between gas and substrate tend to infinity. Further, we present a fast integration algorithm based partly on a “method of lines” space-discretization, partly on the “method of characteristics” for “quasi linear” hyperbolic partial differential equations, the separation being allowed by a two time scale analysis of the system. The model has been identified, through a purposely designed genetic algorithm, and validated on experimental data.