Air Quality: Keeping You in Compliance

Air-quality regulations are getting stricter. Caterpillar^® engine technology can keep you and your customers in compliance anywhere in the world — today and in the future.

Cat^® engines meet current regulations for non-road equipment enacted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the European Union. Research and development is focused on compliance with even stricter regulations to come. Two emission-control technologies are critical.

Electronic control reduces emissions by optimizing combustion under different load and temperature conditions. Sensors monitor engine conditions and feed information to an electronic control module (ECM). The ECM then precisely adjusts fuel delivery and combustion timing to achieve the necessary emission control.

Charge-air cooling (also called aftercooling) is the cooling of hot, pressurized air from turbochargers before it enters the combustion chamber. Cooler intake air helps reduce NOx emissions.

Selected Cat engines use these technologies today. Both will advance as stricter regulations phase in over the next several years.