Patent ID: 8387372

Claim:
A device for filtering particulates from an exhaust gas feedstream of an internal combustion engine, comprising: a filter substrate having a multiplicity of alternately closed parallel flow passages having porous walls oriented parallel to a flow axis of the exhaust gas between an inlet and an outlet thereof, wherein subsets of the flow passages are associated with respective ones of a plurality of zones; a flow control valve to control flow of exhaust gas to each of the plurality of zones; a multi-zone heating element including a plurality of individually activated heating elements each corresponding to one of the plurality of zones; and a control module configured to: operate the flow control valve to obstruct the flow of exhaust gas through a selected one of the plurality of zones to achieve a low flowrate of the exhaust gas through said selected one of the plurality of zones and coincidently operate the multi-zone heating element to activate the one of the plurality of individually activated heating elements corresponding to said selected one of the plurality of zones; and then deactivate the heating element and continue to operate the flow control valve to obstruct the flow of exhaust gas through said selected one of the plurality of zones to achieve the low flowrate of the exhaust gas through said selected one of the plurality of zones; wherein the low flowrate of the exhaust gas comprises a flowrate suitable to propagate a soot oxidation front through the subset of flow passages associated with said selected one of the plurality of zones after deactivating the heating element.