14 DAY TRIAL // A team of experts has recently developed a new approach to constructing catalytic converters such as those that go on cars. Their devices need less of the active chemical needed for the reactions.
Converters usually contain the expensive and rare chemical platinum, which is also of extreme importance to clean-energy applications, including the construction of fuel cell.
Given that the chemical is very expensive, automakers naturally want to use very small quantities of platinum.
They need to make catalytic converters able to turn the dangerous fumes resulting from internal combustion engines to less harmful chemicals, such as carbon dioxide and water.
Otherwise, the toxic byproducts would hurt many people, jeopardizing their health, and increasing the incidence of diseases such as asthma. But platinum can convert them into something else.
But the temperature inside converters oftentimes gets to very high levels, which makes the platinum particles clump together into larger blocks, reducing the filter's conversion efficiency.
The only solution to this problem is using more platinum, which again increases costs. But now a team of researchers has come up with a solution to this issue.
A new generation of catalytic systems is described online, in the latest online issue of the German Chemical Society's Journal Angewantde Chemie International Edition.
This is a model catalytic system only, but researchers say that platinum does not agglomerate inside it, which means that smaller amounts of the rare stuff will be used for the job.
Washington University in St. Louis School of Engineering and Applied Science expert Younan Xia, PhD, was a part of the new investigation. The expert is the James M. McKelvey professor of biomedical engineering at the university.
“It’s very tricky to make this kind of coating thin enough and porous enough so you don’t really affect the activity of the platinum catalyst. So that’s a major development,” Xia reveals.
“It looks like we can run these up to 750 degrees without any significant agglomeration. The typical temperature for a catalytic converter is about 550, so in that sense, it should be able to last for a longer time,” he goes on to explain.