In the quest for more sustainable aircraft propulsion systems, hydrogen-burning internal combustion engines have garnered interest from OEMs such as Airbus and Rolls-Royce because hydrogen combustion does not produce planet-warming carbon emissions. However, it is not totally emissions-free. Much like their fossil fuel-guzzling counterparts, hydrogen combustion engines produce nitrogen oxides (NOx) that pollute the air and contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone, a major component of smog that damages human health.
To help combat this problem, a team of researchers at the University of California (UC) Riverside have discovered what they say is a low-cost method of reducing NOx pollution from a hydrogen-burning engine by improving the efficiency of its catalytic converter. They accomplished this by infusing a platinum catalyst with a porous material known as “Y zeolites” and detailed the results in a recent paper published in the journal Nature Communications.
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