Why Diesel Particulate Filters Are Mandatory
In 2009, diesel particulate filters were made mandatory on diesel vehicles, in order to help reduce the effects of harmful emissions that these types of vehicles tend to release into the environment. The goal was to have these filters become as common in diesel cars as catalytic converters are in most petrol cars. These filters have been designed to greatly reduce the overall diesel soot emissions by up to eighty percent in most cases, which is expected to have a tremendous effect on the environment. Diesel particulate filters work by trapping the soot particles that are created during emission and that come through the exhaust.
In order to keep the efficiency of these filters at their peak, it is important that they are being cleaned out regularly. The soot that is caught in the filtration process needs to be burnt off at very high temperatures – only a small amount of residue remains in the end. There are two central ways that this process is carried out – passively and actively. During the passive cleaning process, the exhaust reaches very high temperatures, typically due to usage of the car on motorways; the soot is then burnt off. In the active process however, which tends to cater more towards those that drive around town more-so than the motorway, the car’s ECU will detect the exceeding level of soot in the filter, and will make very subtle changes to the engine’s timing, in order to reach high enough temperatures to get rid of the particulate matter. If the diesel particulate filters do not remain clean, and reach a high enough level of build up, they will have to be taken back to the dealer’s garage in order to be fixed. In most cases however, the cleaning process is carried out without any trouble.