What makes catalytic converters so expensive

Tablets Smartwatches Speakers Drones. Accessories Buying Guides How-tos Deals. Health Energy Environment. YouTube Instagram Adobe. Kickstarter Tumblr Art Club. Film TV Games. Fortnite Game of Thrones Books. Comics Music. Filed under: Featured Videos Science Transportation. A catalytic converter is an essential part in most cars that takes the toxic gasses emitted by a vehicle and converts them into non-toxic gasses. Think about how often you drive your own car. What if every time you drove somewhere you emitted toxic gasses into the air?

Now think about all the cars you see on the road each day when you drive. Think of all the toxic gasses that would be emitted into the air. No thanks! Vehicles that run on petroleum and were manufactured after have a catalytic converter installed. This shape and material creates a large surface area to afford the most possible contact with the exhaust gases to catalyst metals.

The way that the catalyst materials are applied to the honeycomb is suspended in a slurry called a washcoat. This is a process that is much more than simply dipping the monolith into a bath with the metals suspended in the slurry. It is a highly engineered process done with precise control that even allows for changing distribution of the catalyst metals within the monolith.

Additionally, there are different mixtures of washcoats applied to the monolith. The first section is typically coated with Rhodium for oxides of nitrogen reduction into nitrogen and oxygen. The next is a cerium layer to promote oxygen storage. No engine is capable of producing perfect combustion, and due to environmental concerns, the catalytic converter is used to reduce the pollution a great deal further to meet stringent standards for pollution control.

Now that we have learned a little bit about what is in a catalytic converter, let us think about the cost of both discount and quality converters. Our goal is to better understand the causes of this degradation and how to counteract it.

Ideally, catalysts should be designed to have the greatest surface area possible to promote the greatest number of chemical reactions. So, manufacturers typically spread many small particles over the surface of a new catalytic converter. From past research we know that, over time, the metal atoms begin to move, forming larger and larger particles that offer less surface area, and thus become less effective. We call this clumping process "sintering. Our team has discovered that sintering isn't the only cause of deactivation.

In fact, this new deactivation mechanism turns out to be quite the opposite of sintering. Under some circumstances, instead of particles getting larger, they decompose into smaller particles and eventually become single atoms that are essentially inactive. This is a new understanding we believe no one has presented before, and it prompted us to look for an entirely new way to maximize the lifespan and performance of the metals in catalytic converters.

Our research suggests that if we carefully control both the size and the spacing of metal particles, palladium particles will neither sinter into large clumps nor decompose into single atoms. Previously, many people in the catalysis community thought that if you want to make particles stable, you had to keep them as far apart as possible to prevent migration of the particles.

We confounded this notion by bringing together a collaborative team that studied degradation in a new way. Aaron Johnston-Peck from the National Institute of Standards and Technology used advanced microscopy to help visualize the presence of the single atoms. They had the computational resources to help us simulate the deactivation mechanism at the atomic scale. In the end, we've provided a scientific basis that could make it possible to maintain pollution reduction while using less precious metal and lowering the costs of catalytic converters.

If automotive engineers ultimately confirm and implement these findings, it would be a huge win for consumers in the long run. Explore further. More from Chemistry. Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form. For general feedback, use the public comments section below please adhere to guidelines.

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