I've been wondering why we can fly people to the moon, build a nuclear bomb, and make the perfect burger, but we still have cars that can churn out only 20 MPG. After seeing the documentary GasHole, I thought the problem was with the catalytic converters that are installed in cars. Why haven't we advanced beyond 1950's research with regard to these devices? Well, according to this study, it's not as easy as I thought. This group from France used a fs laser to trigger a reaction that mimicked the conditions in an exhaust system and then an IR spectrometer to analyze the surface of the catalyst at rate of 30 million/sec. They found that the key step was a cyanide flip between silver nanoparticles and the alumina support. I hope this finding can finally help us make better converters and reduce our pollution!
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Improving Catalytic Converters
I've been wondering why we can fly people to the moon, build a nuclear bomb, and make the perfect burger, but we still have cars that can churn out only 20 MPG. After seeing the documentary GasHole, I thought the problem was with the catalytic converters that are installed in cars. Why haven't we advanced beyond 1950's research with regard to these devices? Well, according to this study, it's not as easy as I thought. This group from France used a fs laser to trigger a reaction that mimicked the conditions in an exhaust system and then an IR spectrometer to analyze the surface of the catalyst at rate of 30 million/sec. They found that the key step was a cyanide flip between silver nanoparticles and the alumina support. I hope this finding can finally help us make better converters and reduce our pollution!
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