I’ve never owned a diesel engine vehicle. What is the purpose of diesel exhaust fluid?
In: Engineering
Diesel engines operate differently from gasoline engines and are potentially strong emitters of pretty nasty chemicals. So we’ve developed a few different technologies that operate together to reduce the amount of nastier emissions.
Specifically we solve one problem inside the engine that causes a new issue where nitrogen-containing chemicals are produced in the exhaust, which is still bad. So Diesel Exhaust Fluid is sprayed into the exhaust gases and the heat from the exhaust breaks DEF down into smaller chemicals which will now react with any nitrogen-containing chemicals they find – ripping the nitrogen atoms off and forming water out of what’s left.
If everything works as it should, the nitrogen atoms will bind together in pairs forming molecular nitrogen (N2) which is naturally like 80% of the air anyway and the rest turns into water and so the DEF has fully “digested” the nasty Nitrogen-chemicals into harmless byproducts.
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