About a dozen years ago, the EPA developed very stringent guidelines and requirements for diesel engines that have been phasing in during the years till now. The effort is to reduce NOx emissions and other particulate matter. As part of the phase in, special filtration and emissions equipment have been required by the EPA. Manufacturers started modifying the exhaust gas circuit of diesel engines. Primarily the addition of a diesel particulate filter (DPF) is at the heart of the mandates. As this filter impacts with soot and other particulate matter, it must go through a self-cleaning process. This process involves injecting fuel into the DPF and using a catalyst known as diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) to facilitate the elimination of the soot that has built up by means of a high temperature burn off. This is known as regen or regeneration. The effectiveness of the Regen is predicated on the amount of soot in the DPF which is created by low temperature operation like idling or low loads. Over time, the filter will be impacted to the point where the regen is not effective and the engine goes into a mandated limp mode until the filter is either cleaned or replace. The other challenge with this soot and low operating conditions (idling), is other critical components become impacted. These include the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) coolers and valves. These were mandated by the EPA in the early 2000’s. Soot will also build up in the EGR cooler (a heat exchanger coupled with the engine coolant to lower exhaust temperatures) and EGR Valves which modulate gas return to reburn hydrocarbons. As the valves begin to stick and the cooler clogs up, fuel efficiency suffers and engine performance drops. Also affected is the variable geometry turbo. Soot binds up the vanes and further performance drop occur.
Semi-Trucks, 1 ton and ¾ ton diesel trucks are greatly impacted by the EPA legislation through expensive down time (trucks out of service) and equipment replacement or cleaning costs. Our process uses a patented process using a chemical cleaner injected into the exhaust circuit thus cleaning the EGR cooler, EGR Valves, Valve, VGT, Selective Catalytic Reducer (SCR) and the DPF. It takes just around and hour for the injection process while the engine is running. This if followed up with an injector cleaner product, oil treatment and oil change. The result is a clean exhaust circuit intake to exhaust tip, extending the life of the engine, improving fuel mileage and eliminating vehicle downtime when these systems become over impacted with soot.
The frequency of service depends on the equipment utilization and load. Effectively, the more idle time the more frequent the service needs to be. Our model will attack first services with goal of maintenance services to prevent outages.