Tuesday, August 21, 2012

New catalyst enables cleaner diesel without the platinum

New catalyst enables cleaner diesel without the platinum:


Enlarge / A Volvo D13A diesel engine, used in trucks.

Modern diesel engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline engines. Cleaning up their exhaust is a bit more challenging, though, due to the large amount of oxygen involved in the combustion. In particular, removing the nitrogen oxides (NOx) formed as oxygen and nitrogen in the air reacting at high temperatures requires specialized systems and expensive catalysts like platinum. While everyone would like to get rid of the platinum, no materials have been found that match its catalytic performance in diesel engine exhaust.
Until now, apparently. Research published recently in Science describes a new catalyst, a complex mixture of metal oxides including manganese, mullite, and the rare earth metals samarium and gadolinium (Mn-mullite (Sm, Gd)Mn2O5, to be precise), that actually performs better than platinum. And it’s cheaper.
The work was performed by scientists at the nanotechnology startup Nanostellar, with collaborators at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, University of Kentucky, and the University of Texas at Dallas.
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