Mineral Can Reduce Pollution from Diesel Engines by Almost Half

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2012) – engineers team at a company affiliated with University of Texas discovered a material that can decrease the pollution produced by vehicles that run on diesel fuel. This material could be a substitute for platinum, a rare expensive element, to control the amount of pollution released into air from diesel engines. This study found that Mullite has about 45 percent lower emission as compared to platinum catalysts. In addition, platinum is an expensive element to mine – one ounce of useable platinum from 10 tons of platinum ore mining. On the other side, NOx emissions are still high and considered in carcinogenic category for human.

Dr. Cho said that “Our goal to move completely away from precious metals and replace them with oxides that can be seen commonly in the environment has been achieved,” Dr. Cho continued that “We’ve found new possibilities to create renewable, clean energy technology by designing new functional materials without being limited by the supply of precious metals.” The mullite alternative is being commercialized under the trademark name Noxicat.

1.W. Wang, G. McCool, N. Kapur, G. Yuan, B. Shan, M. Nguyen, U. M. Graham, B. H. Davis, G. Jacobs, K. Cho, X. Hao. Mixed-Phase Oxide Catalyst Based on Mn-Mullite (Sm, Gd)Mn2O5 for NO Oxidation in Diesel Exhaust. Science, 2012; 337 (6096): 832 DOI: 10.1126/science.1225091, Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816141455.htm

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