Diesel particulate trap

Claim 1

Apparatus for filtering solid particulates from suspension in fluid streams such as exhaust gas from diesel engines, which comprises a filter of honeycomb structure having a matrix of thin porous walls defining a plurality of cells extending longitudinally and mutually parallel therethrough between inlet and outlet end faces of the structure, the walls containing substantially uniform interconnected open porosity of a volume and size sufficient to enable the fluid to flow completely through the walls and to restrain most or all of the particulates from passing completely through the walls, the transverse cross-sectional shapes of the cells forming a substantially uniformly repeating pattern of geometric shapes without interior corner angles of less than 30°, an inlet group of the cells open at the inlet end face and closed adjacent to the outlet end face, an outlet group of the cells closed adjacent to the inlet end face and open at the outlet end face, each cell of the inlet group sharing cell walls only with cells of the outlet group and each cell of the outlet group sharing cell walls only with cells of the inlet group, wherein the improvement comprises the volume of interconnected open porosity and the mean pore diameter of the pores forming the open porosity lying within the area defined by the boundary lines connecting points 1-2-3-4 in FIG. 4.