Reaction Mechanism in Catalytic Soot Combustion with CeO2 Catalysts

Introduction Diesel soot elimination is a very difficult problem. The catalytic filters seems to be one of the technological alternatives in order to trap and burn the soot, at the exhaust gas temperature. In order to advance in a rational catalyst design, the reaction mechanism must be understood. In spite of this need, and even though there are many papers in the field, detailed studies regarding soot combustion mechanism are scarce, and the real kinetic is not typically reported. In most of these works a power-law rate expression was used to fit the experimental data [1].