Say Hello to the Catalytic Converter

Allo to you all! Hope our concerted efforts to save planet earth finds all of you in good cheer :) I made mention of catalytic converters if you remember my earlier post. Many of us are concerned about our planet.

Hear this - according to a fairly recent report there are 820 million vehicles on the roads today. That’s how serious the problem really is. So, where was I? Ah! Catalytic converters. These first appeared - correct me if I’m wrong - in 1974(?) At a very basic level of understanding this device is meant to reduce the harmful effects of emissions before they exit your vehicle’s exhaust system.

The two types of catalytic converter bodies are honeycomb and ceramic beads. The honeycomb structure is the more commonly used one. In automobile engineering ‘stoichiometric point’ refers to the dream ‘air-to-fuel’ mixture ratio. So in theory, at the stoichiometric point all the fuel gets burned (as unburned fuel is undesirable) using all of the free oxygen available. Ideal combustion. When a car engine is designed to burn fuel carefully, emissions are reduced significantly.

Less dangerous emissions would include nitrogen gas, carbon dioxide (though this does have a hand in global warming) and water vapor. Now we come to the real villains of the peace - carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons or volatile organic compounds. And whom do these villainous fellows have to thank? Imperfect combustion. Yessir! These emissions are the reason why we hear of smog, acid rain and more.

Enter the catalytic converter, designed to reduce their harmful effects. In the catalytic converter the reduction catalyst and the oxidation catalyst are the two types of catalysts. The reduction catalyst converts nitrogen oxide to nitrogen gas. The oxidation catalyst reduces the amount of unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.

Am I blinding you with science? Ok. I’ll give it a rest now. :) I hope you’ve learned something from this about the role of catalytic converters unless you already knew this.