New catalyst design promises to cut NOx emissions

New catalyst designs are needed to reduce the emission of nitrogen oxides - NO_{x -} because current technologies only work well at relatively high temperatures.

“The key challenge in reducing emissions is that they can occur over a very broad range of operating conditions, and especially exhaust temperatures,” said Rajamani Gounder, the Larry and Virginia Faith Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering in Purdue University’s Davidson School of Chemical Engineering. “Perhaps the biggest challenge is related to reducing NO_x at low exhaust temperatures, for example during cold start or in congested urban driving.”

In addition to these transient conditions, future vehicles will operate at lower temperatures due to improved efficiency. “So we’re going to need catalysts that perform better, not only during transient conditions, but also during sustained lower exhaust temperatures,” Gounder said.

He co-led a team of researchers from Purdue University, Notre Dame University and diesel engine manufacturer Cummins who uncovered an essential property of the catalyst for it to be able to convert nitrogen oxides. Their findings have been published in Science.