Older converters used a head pellet constitution to capture heat, forcing the exhaust to flow through and around the metal balls, which were trapped in a containing matrix. More modern converters use honeycomb-shaped matrices of platinum-palladium alloy, coated with a wash-coat of silica and alumina, which helps increase efficiency. The newest converters use a ceramic honeycomb which lasts longer, is more efficient and contains little or no precious and expensive platinum alloy.
Converter Drawbacks
Older catalytic converters were very heavy and restrictive, costing precious horsepower in the deficit days of the '70s and reducing fuel mileage by as much as 10 percent. The newest high-flow honeycomb designs, however, flow significantly better than lead-pellet types. Converters often produce harmful emissions of their own: hydrogen sulfide and ammonia are the most common, but some also produce the organic toxin dioxin.Cash for Cats
History
Catalytic converters were ahead developed in the 1950s by Eugene Houdry, a French-American engineer. They basic entered Industry for advantage on automobiles in 1973, and were legislated as necessary in 1975. Other industries soon jumped on the immature wagon, applying converters to virtually anything with an engine, including forklifts, generators and battleships.
Function
All catalytic converters service on essentially the identical principal. The converter housing contains a grid-like substrate that is designed to arrive inordinately high-reaching heat, finishing the combustion fashion begun by the engine and vaporizing contaminants. Many converters store excess O2 from the catalytic method, using it to hurry up the reaction under high-stress conditions. The inside of some converters can stretch over 1,000 degrees under common process, and significantly extra under meltdown conditions.
Types
Dispirited smoke makes pathetic airCatalytic converters are a constitutive chip of any automotive emission step. These devices appliance heat to chemically respond (catalyse) with harmful emissions conforming carbon monoxide, nitric oxides and unburnt hydrocarbons and modify them to bounteous inert forms. They've been required on all cars sold in the USA thanks to 1975, and keep helped to pennies the scenery of the automotive Production worldwide.
Catalytic converter theft is rampant in some areas, since older units contain great quantities of the aforementioned precious metals. A typical catalytic converter contains over $200 worth of platinum, palladium and rhodium. But don't break out the reciprocating saw and retirement plan just yet; according to the EPA, the cost to extract these precious metals from used converters makes recycling them for the platinum only slightly more economical than simply refining more.
