With all of the technological advances lately, couldn’t a catalytic converter be designed with cheaper materials that aren’t worth stealing?
In: 2057
Catalytic converters process hot exhaust gases. Common metals oxidize readily at these temperatures, so they don’t last very long. Only rare metals will survive long enough to be worth building into the exhaust system.
*Could* one be designed? Perhaps. Chemistry’s a complicated subject.
*Has* one been designed without other downsides? Probably not. There’s no obvious reason why manufacturers would keep using a more expensive solution if a cheaper one were available.
Not yet. Electrics cars are really the answer here. Nothing to catalyze because there are no emissions.
Replacing the metals in catalytic converters is a lot easier said than done. We use those metals in catalytic converters because of the unique chemistry properties of the platinum group, which has 6 metals in it (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum). We chemists call this group of metals the noble metals because of they are highly non-reactive, which is a result of their electron configuration. As you may remember, the electron configuration is a large part of what makes an element distinct from the other elements on the periodic table (pedants: yes this is a simplification for ELI5). So, in short, simply choosing a cheaper catalyst isn’t exactly easy (or even necessarily possible).
The noble metals have tons is applications for being a useful catalyst, including in spaceflight! Hydrogen peroxide is used as a single fuel for rockets by flowing it over a noble metal catalyst bed, causing it to spontaneously decay into water and oxygen gas. This reaction propels the rocket without the need for a second oxidizer!
Edit: thanks to u/justonemom14 for pointing out the obvious mistake I made!
I believe there are only 7 known metals that can be used in catalytic converters. They need special properties to convert exhaust to less harmful gases.
You could easily create a converter that is less valuable to theft by making it more difficult and costly to recycle, but theft isn’t enough of a problem that it is worth intentionally making them more difficult to recycle.
That being said, maybe after he is done revolutionizing modern technology once again, John Goodenough (the rockstar of material sciences) might dedicate half a afternoon to creating a new renewable converter part with a 700 year part life.
All the best material scientists are still trying to figure out how to build the entire plane out of the black box
I think a mechanical solution would be easier (or at least optional). When the car stops, the converter is lifted up, or the car drops down or something like that?
Electric vehicles don’t need catalytic converters. All those expensive metals can go directly into the batteries instead.
You’ve stumbled on the reason why Elisabeth Holmes got herself convicted of fraud. Technological advances come in two flavors: fundamental scientific discoveries, and innovation. Fundamental scientific discoveries are considerably more rare, but make newer, better products possible in ways that could never have been accomplished before. For example, the invention of the gallium-nitride LED back in 1989 won Isamu Akasaki the nobel prize in chemistry, and also completely revolutionized electronic imagery technology, enabling flat screen TV’s, handheld phones and tablets with full color displays.
By contrast, the small changes in manufacturing techniques of flat screen displays, from twisted nematic to in-plane switching to organic light-emitting diodes are all varying innovations on that fundamental LED technology made possible back in 1989. They contributed to the progresion of technology by lowering their cost, or making them perform better, or sometimes both.
So, in the case of the catalytic converter, you’d need one of those *fundamental* scientific advancements to identify a chemical process to reduce emissions of unspent fuel, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxide from internal combustion engines. Arguably that fundamental technology would be found in hydrogen fuel-cell technology, since the emissions of that power source are nothing but steam, or in electric cars, which produce no significant emissions by the vehicle at all. So what we’re waiting for there is the innovation on those technologies to make them more accessible, affordable, and efficient. In 2021, hybrid cars have captured 5.5% of the light vehicle market, and all-electric cars grabbed another 3.2%.
Edit: So, back to Elizabeth Holmes. What she was pitching to her investors was the ‘Edison’, an all-in-one test which would, with just a few drops of blood from a patient, screen for a huge and wide variety of possible diseases. The problem is, this is an achievement which would have required one of those fundamental scientific breakthroughs, rather than some minor innovation on existing blood sample technology. Of course, if her product had merely not worked, then she wouldn’t have been charged with anything. However, rather than admit her product was not workable after initial funding ran dry, she began to falsify the results of her tests, so as to attract further venture capital. She also lied to investors about sales & revenue.
Probably not.
The cheapest catalysts we have now are platinum, rhodium, and palladium, and none of them are cheap. So suppose Elon Musk invests a billion or two dollars into developing a material that replaces all three. Great job, Elon! Oh — and here are your royalties, because obviously after putting billions of dollars into developing Muskium you’re not giving it away for nothing. So great, there are no precious metals in the catalytic converters anymore; oh darn, people are stealing them because they’re full of Muskium. Tl;dr: the chemistry’s tough, but the economics are absolutely brutal.
And when you look at the economics, it doesn’t make sense to put billions of dollars into something that cleans up dirty engines’ emissions when you could put that money into making clean engines — or into designing cities where you don’t need a car to survive. Or both.
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