Richard S. Sapienza

SOOT REDUCTION IN DIESEL ENGINES BY CATALYTIC EFFECTS

The diesel engine’s proven fuel economy and lower emissions of unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide makes it a viable alternative to a gasoline automotive plant, but the inherent production of particulate matter (soot) threatens the expanded use of the diesel engine.

Novel Interpretations of Carbon Oxide Reductions

The manufacture of petrochemicals utilizing nonconventional hydrocarbon sources such as coal has suddenly become recognized as having great potential. Coal, which comprises over 80% of the known recoverable fossil fuel reserves in the United States, is the “chemical resource material of the future.” Of the general routes to convert coal to chemicals, the production of petrochemicals from synthesis gas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide produced by the steam gasification of coal) heterogeneously catalyzed by transition metals, has attracted considerable attention since its discovery. Practically the full range of petrochemicals and oil products can be obtained from these syntheses.

Use of multi-metallic bifunctional catalysts for the conversion of coal derived synthesis gas to methanol. Progress report No. 3, June--August 1978

Several metal carbonyls have been found to produce methanol from CO/H/sub 2/ under conditions similar to those reported earlier for Mo(CO)/sub 6/. Co/sub 2/(CO)/sub 8/ was found to produce ethanol as well as methanol under these conditions. The intermetallic compound FeTi was found to catalyze the reduction of CO and CO/sub 2/ to methane. The appearance of CH/sub 4/ was linear with time for both CO and CO/sub 2/. CO/sub 2/ reduction was faster than that observed for CO.