Hybrid switching control of automotive cold start hydrocarbon emission

Reduction of cold start hydrocarbon (HC) emission requires a proper compromise between low engine-out HC emission and fast light-off of the three way catalytic converter (TWC). In this paper a model based approach is used to design and optimize a hybrid switching system for reducing HC emission of a mid-sized passenger car during the cold start phase of FTP-75. This hybrid system takes the benefit of increasing TWC temperature during the early stages of the driving cycle by switching between different operational modes. The switching times are optimized to reduce the cumulative tailpipe HC emission of an experimentally validated automotive emission model. It is shown that the new hybrid system can reduce cold start HC emissions by 7.5% to 52.5% compared to traditional single mode control approaches.