Platinum Metals Review - Volume 31, Issue 4, 1987

Johnson Matthey are reporting successful commercialisation of oxidation catalysts for the clean-up of gas turbine exhaust. The reduction of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons is achieved with a platinum-rhodium catalyst which minimises the formation of sulphur trioxide. The catalyst system, supported on an energy saving, low pressure drop metal monolith, has been used continuously for five years on large industrial gas turbines.

Unlike other fuel cell types, the direct methanol fuel cell does not require a separate hydrogen generation system and therefore has greater commercial potential, particularly for powering portable appliances. However, the limiting factor for the cost-effective performance of such systems is the catalytic activity of the electrodes, in particular the anode. The single most active anode material is platinum, which is usually dispersed on a high surface area carbon support. It has been found that the addition of small amounts of metals such as lead, rhenium, ruthenium and tin to the platinum produces a significant increase in activity. The best of these bimetallic systems is based on a mixture of platinum and ruthenium. However, further worthwhile improvements in anode activity could result from a more fundamental understanding of the methanol decomposition reaction. In recognition of this, the Commission of the European Communities has initiated a research programme which involves collaboration between universities and industry in four member states. This article is based largely upon a paper given at the CEC–Italian Fuel Cell Workshop in Taormina, Sicily, in June 1987.

Sponsored by the Dalton Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Third International Conference on the Chemistry of the Platinum Group Metals, was held at Sheffield University in July 1987. The first meeting in this series was held at Bristol in 1981 and the second in Edinburgh in 1984. Over three hundred and fifty delegates from academia and industry attended with more than half from abroad and with over twenty countries represented. During the week forty-five lectures were presented along with over one hundred and seventy posters.

The present day importance to both science and industry of resistance thermometers and thermocouples utilising the electrical and thermoelectrical properties of the platinum metals is so well known that it has tended to overshadow the use of these metals for crucial components in gas pyrometers. For perhaps one hundred and fifty years gas thermometers, mostly incorporating noble metal bulbs, have provided a most accurate means of determining high temperatures. This article gives a selective account of early developments in temperature measurement involving gas thermometry and the platinum metals, one result of which was the adoption of the first internationally recognised standard scale of temperatures, in October 1887.