Looks great to me. No precious metals, effective with many types of fuel, works well in the presence of water vapor. How fast will we see this technology deployed, I wonder?

Cervus,
If they move fast, three years is probably how long it will take. Auto components manufaturers will be all over this to cover Tier2 Bin 5 and Euro 6 diesels.

Lad:

When battery costs come down so that the vehicle is sub-$20k, when I can recharge a BEV in ten minutes on a long roadtrip, when I can drive 300 miles on a charge, I'll switch. Until then PHEVs, HEVs, and yes, diesel (running biodiesel) will likely have a bigger role.

As for the automakers being "late to the party" for diesels, I blame overly-stringent anti-smog emissions regs. However, it's advances like this that might actually make them achievable for a reasonable cost.

There are other reasons why it is beneficial to remove as much sulphur from the fuel. Sulphur has a large impact on soot formation; the lower the sulphur content, the less soot is created during combustion. (Bio-diesel is virtually sulphur-free, in Europe 3-8 ppm sulphur diesel is economically viable to produce (Net price at the pump around here is, however, 0,493 EUR/liter (2,54 USD/gal); including taxes, this amounts to 5,57 USD/gal EU-average for diesel right now.

As long as gasoline is dead-cheap in the US (even less expensive than water), sulphur removal is not going to be economically viable unless required by legislation.

However, diesel engines can be operated "lean" - with higher soot output, or "hot" with higher NOx output (but less soot).

since regulations regarding diesel engines are very relaxed in europe, soot removal was easier to do (demanded from public) than removal of NOx; NOx content in the exhaust is still allowed 5 times the levels of gasoline engines around here.

Otoh, "hotter" operations in a diesel cycle would also increase it's efficiency somewhen, so if the soot formation is low enough for this kind of catalyst to operate efficiently over the required miles (150-250 000), I would think it won't come as a net efficiency decrease (lower milage), but also the milage wouldn't increase by much over the inheritent ~15% higher volumetric energy content of diesel fuel.

Just a remainder: Diesel is denser, contains more energy per liter (gallon) than gasoline; at the same engine efficiencies, a diesel must demonstrate approx 15% higher (volumetric) milage over a gasoline engine. One would expect an even higher milage gain as the diesel cycle is supposed to be more efficient, but thats more often than not no longer the case with all the exhaust cleaning and auxilliary equipment necessary for a diesel engine (turbo, high-pressure pump, particulate/nox catalyst, ...)

(a) every modern LDV diesel engine is equipped with a two-way oxidation catalyst based on platinum whose job is to bring HC and CO emissions under the legal limit. Engine-out emissions of these compounds are already much lower than from gasoline engines but still too high. Therefore, low sulphur fuel is still very desirable for high life expectancy of this device. The US has already cut over from 300ppm to 15ppm, EU countries have until 2010 to cut over from 50ppm to 10ppm (some already have).

(b) the catalyst described above accelerates the well-known reburning mechanism for NOx reduction. It#s good to have yet another alternative, but it's not clear how much the catalyst will cost or how much extra fuel its operation will consume.

(c) @Lad: diesels do produce 20-40% less CO2 per kWh than spark ignition engines do. Also, there are many more ways to produce diesel fuel substitutes (biodiesel and xTL from a variety of feedstocks).

BEVs would be great but right now, demand in the LDV market is not in the same place as battery technology. This applies to initial cost, performance and longevity. Start-ups like Tesla Motors or Phoenix may succeed in defining new LDV market segments but it's very early days yet. We won't in a position to abandon ICE R&D for many years yet.

@Harvey D. -

diesel hybrids are technologically possible but far too expensive for mass production to make sense. Last I read, the premium was well in excess of EUR 6000 compared to the base vehicle with a similarly powerful NA gasoline engine. For reference, most of Peugeot's cars retail in the EUR 10,000-30,000 price range.

Delivery trucks are a totally different market and, not just because businesses can write off the steep depreciation on their tax returns. The duty cycles are also very different from your average LDV. Logistically, fleet operators can more easily justify installing outdoor recharging stations on company property. As for "final solution", that's a very poor choice of words.