In response to the recent reinforcements in exhaust emissions regulations, the amount of precious metals used in catalysts has been increasing. Nissan has developed technology to achieve the same performance as conventional catalysts using half the amount of precious metals. The company will introduce and expand this new catalyst in future products from FY 2008.
Features
Exhaust-cleaning is done using precious metals such as platinum (Pt),palladium(Pd) and rhodium (Rh) inside the catalyst. In conventional catalysts, the high temperatures within the catalyst caused the precious metals to cluster-up, reducing the exposed metal surface area, leading to less-effective cleaning of the gases. To compensate this problem, the new catalyst employs advanced nano-technology to keep the fine metal particles separated. As a result, the amount of precious metals used can be significantly reduced, without changing the performance.
Technology Overview
Cluster-up of substrates under high temperatures is prevented by surrounding the substrates with wall material. By strengthening the chemical cohension between subtrates and precious metals, movement of fine precious metals on the substrate can be limited to enhance prevention of clustering.
