Emission Reduction During TWC Warm-up: Control Synthesis and Hardware-in-the-Loop Verification

Atmospheric pollution caused by automotive vehicles is nowadays a very relevant and open problem. To limit the emissions level, the vehicles are equipped with a three way catalytic converter. Currently the largest amount of pollutants is produced during the warm-up phase when the the catalyst is not activated. In this work we propose a model-based active control strategy, based on an optimal approach, aimed to the fast heating of the catalyst while guaranteing the driver drivability requirements. The effectiveness of the control action is shown via Hardware-In-the-Loop experiments, where the performance of the actual control hardware has been tested in the loop. Here the actual plant is replased by the dSPACE Mid-Size Vehicle Simulator.