Johnson Matthey to demonstrate DPF technology on switch locomotive at LA ports

30 December 2010

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) has awarded the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and its consortium partners, Union Pacific Railroad and Johnson Matthey $346,000 to demonstrate diesel particulate filter (DPF) technology on a switch locomotive to achieve EPA Tier 4 PM standards.

The funding is provided as part of the Air Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) under the Assembly Bill (AB) 118. California’s AQIP is an incentive program that authorizes ARB to fund the demonstration of technology advancing projects through 2015. AQIP focuses primarily on reducing criteria pollutant emissions, with concurrent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as a co-benefit.

The DPF system is likely to be similar to the Johnson Matthey’s DPF systems developed for on-road heavy-duty and stationary diesel engines in new or retrofit applications, but no technical details were provided. The locomotive application creates special challenges related to packaging of the large DPF volumes, space constrains, as well as mechanical durability.

The project is targeted for completion on June 30, 2012.

Source: Johnson Matthey