New Gun In War On Smog

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday August 10, 1995

BY TONY SELMES. Tony Selmes is executive director of the MotorTraders' Association of NSW.

SOME of the developments in the battle to reduce the motor vehicle's effects on the environment are driving us into the realm of science fiction.

As reported in the US publication Automotive Cooling Journal (June, 1995), it is even possible that radiator repair businesses will soon be making a major contribution to reducing air pollution.

They will do this by applying a catalytic coating to the exterior of a vehicle's radiator and air-conditioning condenser that will reduce ground level ozone and carbon monoxide.

Impossible? Not if the "catalytic radiator" developed by the Engelhard Corporation in the US fulfils its promise.

Engelhard invented the exhaust system three-way catalytic converter now used in almost every new vehicle manufactured in the Western world.

The importance of its new development, if successful, goes well beyond environmental concerns. Every carmaker is striving to come as close as possible to the ideal zeroemission vehicle mandated by groundbreaking legislation in California that requires 10 per cent of vehicles sold in that State to meet that standard by the year 2003.

The Engelhard technology is so simple that radiator shops could remove a vehicle's radiator and air condenser, apply a catalytic coating to their exteriors, and replace the units for immediate benefits.

This has been estimated in an early study to do more for air quality than a combination of electric cars, reformatted petrol and a program to reduce commuter milage.

Field tests in Southern California indicated that up to 90 per cent of the ozone and carbon monoxide passing through the radiator and condenser would be converted to benign or less harmful substances. The ozone is converted to oxygen and the carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide.

Naturally, there are some complications that prevent an instantaneous transition to the PremAir system for every vehicle on the road.

The system works best when sunlight is at maximum and pollutants in the air react with sunlight to form ozone. To obtain maximum environmental benefit the air must be kept flowing through the catalytic radiator and condenser at the sunniest times of the day.

This would mean that vehicles' fans would have to be kept running for about two hours in sunlight, even if the vehicle was parked. It can be done with the development of after-run electric fans triggered by electronic control units responding to sunlight that make every stationary vehicle a smog-fighter.

This is fine for new vehicles that incorporate the PremAir technology, but the difficulties and expenses of converting existing vehicles will require a great deal of consideration before the PremAir technology could be universally applied.

Nevertheless, it is just this sort of resourcefulness and innovation that has already made the modern motor vehicle so much better than its predecessors.