Southwest Research Institute, one of the largest nonprofit R&D organizations in the U.S. recently announced the commencement of the Advanced Combustion Catalyst and Aftertreatment Technologies II, that will be starting from 15 November 2018 with a meeting at the San Antonio headquarters of SwRI. The consortium will be focusing on innovative catalyst technologies and engine emissions solutions and will be open to automotive industry manufacturers taking an interest in such issues.

The first Advanced Combustion Catalyst and Aftertreatment Technologies consortium was held in 2014 which invited members of the engine manufacturing and affiliated business sectors of the automotive industry. It is being expected that a better understanding of emission control systems and catalysts will be received through this program by modelling the systems and characterizing the chemistry of emissions from advanced combustion regimes.

The first four-year consortium that would be completed on 14 November 2018 in San Antonio has developed models to predict growth, deposit formation and composition of urea-based selective catalytic reduction aftertreatment systems, typified by the complex emission of advanced combustion regimes. It also evaluated the chemical and physical properties of lube oil-based ash and how it affected aftertreatment component performance.

Consortium members have to collaborate to evaluate new catalyst technologies and advanced combustion engine emissions. Annual membership cost for four-year consortium is $95,000 per year and this gives companies access to research that would not be financially feasible to conduct individually. All intellectual property produced in the consortium will be made available to the members free of any royalty. The decision of which research projects to pursue will depend on participants.

For the uninitiated, SwRI manages various automotive consortia which include Clean High Efficiency Diesel Engine VII, the longest-running diesel engine research program in the automotive industry, High-Efficiency, Dilute Gasoline Engine program that works to improve gasoline engine technology and various others.