A Study on Urea-Water Solution Spray-Wall Impingement Process and Solid Deposit Formation in Urea-SCR de-NOx System

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) has been exhibited as a promising method of NOx abatement from diesel engine emissions. Long-term durability is one of the key requirements for the automotive SCR system. A high NOx conversion, droplet distribution and mixing, and fluid film and solid deposit formation are the major challenges to the successful implementation of the SCR system. The current study is therefore three-fold. Firstly, high-speed images disclose detailed information of the spray impingement on the heated impingement surface. The spray impingement investigation took place in a specially-designed optically-accessible visualization chamber where the Z-type shadowgraph technique was used to capture the high-speed images. Wall temperature has a great influence on the film formation and wall wetting. A higher wall temperature can significantly increase the droplet evaporation, and consequently, wall wetting decreases. The numerical analysis was performed based on the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach using STAR CCM+ CFD code. Secondly, the resultant phenomena due to spray-wall impingement such as fluid film generation and transport, solid deposit formation, and thermal decomposition were recorded using a high-speed camera operating at a low frame rate. Infrared thermal imaging was used to observe the spray cooling effect after impingement. Spray impingement caused local cooling, which led to wall film formation, which introduced urea crystallization. Finally, solid deposits were analyzed and characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). FTIR analysis revealed that urea decomposition products vary based on the temperature, and undecomposed urea, biuret, cyanuric acid, ammeline, and melamine can be formed at different temperatures. TGA analysis showed that accumulated deposits were hard to remove. Moreover, complete thermal decomposition of deposits is not possible at the regular exhaust temperature, as it requires a comparatively long time span.