Effects of the internal structures of monolith ceramic substrates on thermal and hydraulic properties: additive manufacturing, numerical modelling and experimental testing

Rigorous emission regulations call for more efficient passive control catalysts for exhaust gas aftertreatment without affecting the internal combustion process and CO2 emissions. Although the state-of-art ceramic honeycomb substrate designs provide high surface area and a degree of flexibility for heat and mass transfer adaptations, additional emission reduction benefits can be achieved when more flexible designs to provide effective thermal management are introduced. The conventional cordierite honeycomb substrates are manufactured by extrusion; therefore, only substrates with straight channels can be fabricated. This study aims to highlight any design limitations of conventional substrates by employing additive manufacturing as the main method of manufacturing diamond lattice structures using DLP (digital light processing) technology. Both conventional substrates and diamond lattice structures are studied numerically and experimentally for flow through resistance and temperature distribution. Numerical predictions and experimental results showed good agreement. The results show the increase of the axial temperature distribution for diamond lattice structures and a significant decrease of the pressure drop (38–45%) in comparison with the benchmark honeycomb with similar surface area.