The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Ford, Engelhard Have High Hopes for ‘Smog-Eating’ System
It’s an astonishingly improbable idea: that air can be cleaned, not polluted, by contact with automobiles rushing down the freeway.
But Ford Motor Co. and Engelhard Corp., a New Jersey company that makes about a third of all the catalytic converters used in U.S. automobiles, say they’ve developed a technology that can do just that. The two companies earlier this week announced a nine-month test of their potentially revolutionary discovery.
The platinum-based coating, which might also be applied to air-conditioning condensers, acts as a catalyst, triggering a chemical reaction that turns smog into harmless elements. Most of the ozone and carbon monoxide that flows across a radiator surface can be transformed with the so-called PremAir system, according to Engelhard researchers. The ozone is turned into oxygen, the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide.
However, these are not the only air pollutants that concern public health officials, and the system would filter out other vehicles’ pollution--not the pollution emitted by the car with the system. The car’s own emissions would continue to be largely controlled by existing catalytic converters.
And though carbon monoxide tends to accumulate on freeways, a unique reaction to another air pollutant--oxides of nitrogen, or NOX--actually makes ozone less plentiful on freeways than in other areas.
The test plan includes painting the coating on air conditioners, heat exchangers and other equipment that pulls air through a heated radiator.
Cautiously optimistic regulators see potential in the Engelhard invention as a supplementary pollution-control device.
“We know they have the ability to make such a product, but we have no idea how effective the product can be until we see some test results,” said Jerry Martin, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board.
Ford and Engelhard say they see vast potential. Earlier tests in Los Angeles found that the coating, which the companies say lasts 10 years or 100,000 miles, converted up to 90% of the ozone and carbon monoxide that breezed over auto radiators, according to the firms. If the 9 million cars in daily use in Los Angeles had their radiators painted with the coating--at a cost of up to $1,000 each--the volume of air treated would equal the air in the L.A. Basin to a height of 15 feet, Engelhard estimates.
Ten times that amount of air could be scrubbed of the two pollutants if drivers had their cars modified to allow radiator fans to run during peak smog periods--even if the cars were parked with the engines turned off.
Under that somewhat unlikely scenario, Ford and Engelhard say ozone reduction could exceed--at a lower price and with less disruption to motorists--such smog-control methods as employee commuting plans and the California mandate for electric cars.
