Daimler Research created the foundation: a look
into the BLUETEC lab

It’s clear that Bernd Krutzsch loves his work. As soon as he picks up his guest downstairs, the head of the Combustion & Emission Control department at Daimler Research begins talking about all the projects his research team has worked on over the past few years — projects that laid the technical foundation for the use of BLUETEC 1 in Mercedes-Benz diesel production cars. Krutzsch believes three milestones were crucial to enabling him and his team to meet the challenge:

At the time, the idea of running a diesel engine rich — i.e. with excess fuel — was a revolutionary concept, the pursuit of which was made possible by the fact that chemists and engine specialists from research and advanced development departments were working together very closely. The fruits of this labor were basic patents that enabled the company to secure intellectual property rights for this new type of exhaust gas treatment technology at a very early stage. You can actually hear the pride in Krutzsch’s voice when he says: “It’s definitely a great feeling for a chemist at an automotive company to be involved in the development of such an important technology.”

As we walk through the labs, he points out that these are the places where it all started. Standing next to a catalytic converter test stand, he explains how he and his team laid the experimental foundation, step by step. Their studies of sulfur-related problems in the converters in particular led to results that were used to develop better and better regeneration and operating strategies.

Daimler Research was involved in the series production project headed by Bernd Lindemann for quite some time, enabling development engineers to benefit from their colleagues’ great expertise in the field of catalysis. Today, the team focuses on the further development of BLUETEC systems for both commercial vehicles and passenger cars, whereby their goals are not only to meet upcoming emission standards such as BIN 5 and US 2010 but also to achieve even more extensive reductions.

Although Krutzsch is certain that the two denoxification technologies used today — NSK and SCR — can still be improved, he’s also sure we won’t be seeing a third, completely new technology anytime soon. “Nevertheless, it’s going to be very important in the future competitive field to fine-tune the details of both basic processes,” he says. “The work here will focus on the robustness of the overall system of engine plus exhaust gas unit, as well as costs.”

One of the approaches the team is pursuing will lead to catalytic converters that integrate several functions into one module. The benefits of such a setup include reduced costs, a lower installation space requirement and, above all, a more favorable positioning of the module close to the engine. The team is currently putting all of the different types of catalytic converter designs through their paces in the lab, and Krutzsch has already discovered some possible weak points: “The biggest sticking points with integrated systems will be their durability and gas treatment effectiveness.”

Two major issues for the future are catalytic converter modeling and simulations of the emission chain all the way from the engine to the last catalytic converter module, including the formulation of an adapted overall operating strategy. Krutzsch is therefore happy that “the company has also been carrying out pioneering work for simulations since the mid-1990s, and it now serves as the benchmark in this field.” He also believes that, more than anything else, simulations need to be able to depict the complexity and flexibility that are required of today’s systems: “Without simulations, it’s impossible to adapt a system to all the different vehicle and engine variants offered on markets around the world.”