Heavy Duty Trucking, January 2021
Fleets are just beginning to accept that they have to get out in front of the DPF rather than waiting for the lights to come on Nobody likes to over maintain equipment but with DPFs the more proactive you are the less heartburn they cause in the long run DPFs are literally sealed trash cans You cant see when theyre getting close to full so the inclination is to keep pumping junk into them until they wont take any more By then you already have a problem Increased aftertreatment regeneration is often seen as the solution but regens can actually compound the problem They are intended to oxidize or burn off the soot particles left behind by fuel that escapes unburned during the combustion process those particles that used to spew from the exhaust stack as black smoke But soot isnt the only substance trapped by a DPF Ash is the big culprit Its residue from oil that slips past the piston rings into the combustion chamber Some of the oil is burned during combustion producing soot but the metallic lubricant additives are incombustible and remain trapped in the DPF as ash When we tear down a DPF we find that up to 90 of the material in there is ash not soot says Jason Gerig commercial on and eve had 14 years to figure it out yet diesel particulate filter maintenance remains a nightmare for many fleets Why do DPFs elicit such gnashing of teeth and pounding of fists Because they are mission critical maintenance items that provide no reliable guidelines on when service needs to be performed Proper cleaning intervals depend on so many factors that its nearly impossible to chart and calculate repeatable service intervals across a fleet especially a diverse fleet DPF MAINTENANCE Diesel particulate filter maintenance takes more than waiting for the yellow light to come on and performing a forced regen By Jim Park Equipment Editor jpark@ truckinginfo com HDT JANUARY 2021 38 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM W Were just now beginning to accept that we have to do things differently from what we have always done in order to maintain our aftertreatment systems PHOTO JIM PARK A NEW APPROACH TO
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