Carbons, being the key culprit for triggering global warming, researchers are up with their arms to find better technologies to capture it from the air, but this may have sidelined the need for reducing another harmful gas emission – the nitrogen gas.
Never mind! The researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have come with a solution even for this. They have developed a new cerium-oxide catalyst capable of reducing NOx emissions efficiently in diesel engine exhaust.
Though the technology is yet to take two to three years to come to the market and is under development for a number of years, the patent pending tech-solution to NOx is already eyed by a number of companies. The companies want to license it and work with the Argonne researchers for scaling up the new technology and bring it to the market.
Previously it has been found that Cu-ZSM-5 and similar catalysts, not only perform poorly in removing NOx from diesel exhaust, they also require temperatures higher than that of normal diesel exhaust. They even don’t work in the presence of water vapor – which is almost always found in engine exhausts.
But, the technology’s developers — Argonne researcher Christopher Marshall and team — analyzing both the structure and performance of various catalysts, have developed an additive that is capable of allowing Cu-ZSM-5 and similar catalysts to overcome all these mentioned difficulties! Congratulations to the team for its new finding, which may be of great help tin reducing the environment’s chocking from at least nitrogen gases to an extend.
Photo: anl.gov
