New efficient catalyst for emission conversion

Berkeley University in the US has discovered a new catalyst which is cheaper and more efficient for car fuel cells.

Catalytic converters are one of the important parts of automobile industry and are used primarily to change combustion chemicals into less polluting emissions and in case of fuel cells they are used for converting water into hydrogen. Previously used catalysts faced one serious drawback, the chemical reactions took place unevenly over the surface of the metal resulting in non utilization of large part of the catalyst which is not desirable.

Chemists at The Berkeley University have successfully developed a new type of catalyst that converts water more efficiently providing an alternative to the previous ones. The new catalyst is called Molybdenite. It is a combination of Molybdenum and sulphur. This material works perfectly for the conversion of water into hydrogen. When lots of such catalysts were used with acidic water they produced considerable amount of hydrogen. Presently high amount of research is required before commercial utilization of the catalyst Member of the research team Christopher Chang considers this to be just the first step towards more efficient development.

Chang’s method is simple and creates materials with billions of active sites on a ridged wafer could allow cheaper, commercially feasible catalysts.


Source: Engineer