Are DPF’s wrongly accused of being inefficient?

While studying the effects of Revive Turbo Cleaner on Diesel Particulate Filters, Andy Amor of Revive has been monitoring DPF soot loading to understand the strategy and efficiency of a vehicle fitted with a DPF that has covered 132,000 miles. Using SP Diagnostics’ SPi tool, the soot loading data was taken at the end of every journey and plotted into a graph to visually demonstrate the regeneration strategy. Andy admits that monitoring the ‘live’ data in real time during each journey would have been more beneficial, but nonetheless, it revealed some very interesting facts.

VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda models equipped with DPFs have the following regeneration strategy, based on the soot loadings calculated by the pressure differential sensor:

0 – 18 grams = Passive Regeneration
18 – 24 grams = Active Regeneration
24 – 40 grams = Customer Initiated Regeneration Drive 40-45 grams = Service Initiated Regeneration
45+ grams = Filter Replacement

Andy says: “Although the majority of journeys during this test were relatively short, just 12 miles, and traffic congestion was varied, it was evident that at the end of every 12 miles, the soot loadings would increase between 0.6 grams to 2.0 grams and during these 12 miles and factoring in congestion and traffic lights, it was long enough

for a passive regeneration to initiate and complete according to the strategy, which was not only interesting, but very surprising!

“In conclusion, despite relatively short journey ‘town’ driving and having covered a total of 132,000 miles, the DPF proved remarkably efficient.”