Overview
The more and more severe laws on environmental protection, as well as society concerns on life quality and sustainable development, oblige industrial entities and institutions to strict controls of exhaust emissions from vehicles equipped with combustion engines. To face the forecast rules on tolerate emissions, abatement catalysts for car exhaust are necessary. Nowadays, to be effective, a catalytic exhaust system must reach a working temperature of about 250°C. This device for NOx, HC and CO conversion emissions is, as a consequence, ineffective during the cold start.
The present project concerned environmental protection catalysts, based on platinum-series elements, to be applied to exhaust abatement systems from vehicle thermal engines. One of the main goals was to decrease their working temperature for the catalytic reaction, increasing in parallel their durability towards temperature ageing. The expected consequence should be a significant decrease of the time necessary to reach steady conditions in the exhaust control system after the cold engine start (particularly when the vehicle is driven in a town centre), and that stabilized towards ageing with time.
In the framework of this project, these investigations continued on two parallel axes:
- Fundamental research (ILV, LCS): determination of the phenomena correlating the ionic bombardment with metal nano-dispersion, depending on the nature and energy of the ion, towards the nature of the treated metal. Application to the catalytic activation of platinum-group metals and other metals on different supports.
- Industrial research (PCA, Renault): tests and validation of the ionic bombardment process on prototypes of catalytic exhaust systems, analyzed on a synthetic gas bench and on a motor bench. Study and development of ionic bombardment methods adapted to the industrial production.