Regulations governing diesel engine emissions have become more stringent from the viewpoint of environmental considerations and cannot be fulfilled simply by improving combustion efficiency. For removing diesel particulate matter (PM) from diesel exhaust gas, utilization of diesel particulate filer (DPF) is effective in the present technology. However, treatment of the collected PM in the DPF, that is, DPF regeneration is a problem. An ideal method is low-temperature regeneration using no catalyst. To overcome the problem, a treatment method of PM using ozone at a relatively low temperature is proposed. An experimental evaluation of the DPF regeneration is performed by regulating the exhaust gas temperature. From the evaluation, the DPF regeneration is achieved at the 180, 250 and 290°C. Among them, the highest performance of the DPF regeneration is achieved at 250°C with the efficiency of 7.10 g(PM)/kWh. The plasma energy required for DPF regeneration is only 0.24% of the power generated by the engine.
