Eco Emissions Systems: Innovation and Potential for Platinum Group Metals
Sunday, June 27th, 2010Mark Anthony submits:
Fossil fuels are bad pollutants, both BEFORE and AFTER they are burned. Before the oil is burned, they could pollute the ocean and kill birds. After the oil is burned, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide is emitted to pollute the air and destroy rain forests. But if oil is only partially burned, the pollution is much worse: it results in emissions containing carbon monoxide, a toxic gas which is several hundred times worse than carbon dioxide in its greenhouse effect; and various nitrogen oxides which kill infants and senior citizens; and worse, particulate matters which are cancer agents which cause millions of deaths per year. The world collectively generates a thousand BP oil spill environmental disasters per year by producing and burning fossil fuels, cumulatively killing many times more people than were killed in WW II.
Incomplete burning of fuel is a big problem, it reduces fuel efficiency and creates air pollution. Scientists have worked relentlessly to solve the problem. The biggest progress so far has been the global adaption of catalytic converters on automobiles. Using PGM metals, platinum, palladium and rhodium, as catalyst metals in catalytic converters, auto makers such as FORD (F), GM (GMGMQ.PK), and TOYOTA (TM) are the largest industry users of PGM. What occurs in catalytic converters is basically after-burning: the incompletely burned fuel is once more burned, this time more thoroughly in the catalytic converters, hence it cuts the pollutant emissions.
