Platinum Metals Review - Volume 36, Issue 4, 1992

To meet the increasingly exacting emission control standards that are emerging, alternative fuel vehicles will be needed. It appears that these will require optimised and dedicated systems utilising innovative control strategies to achieve the necessary standards. In this paper, the major emission control issues for engines fuelled with alcohol, natural gas, propane, or diesel fuels are identified. Control strategies employing dedicated emission control catalysts are discussed and performance results from laboratory, engine and vehicle tests are highlighted. Comparisons are made with gasoline fuelled engines, where significant experience has been accumulated over the past decade with the use of closed loop fuel control plus a catalytic converter to suppress the three main polluting emissions. The use of catalytic converters containing flow through catalysts is emphasised.

Continuing interest in metal-hydrogen systems and in the advancement of the so-called hydrogen economy, has been demonstrated by two recent meetings, each attended by participants from some thirty countries. The first was at Uppsala University, Sweden during June, and the second was held in Paris later that month. At both it was evident that considerable research work involving the platinum group metals is taking place throughout the world.

It is as Alfred Werner’s primary scientifi adversary and the chemist whose work on co-ordination compounds provided the experimental basis for Werner’s revolutionary co-ordination theory that Jørgensen is usually remembered. Yet in his work on what were then called “molecular compounds” he made valuable contributions to our basic knowledge of rhodium and platinum complexes.