Physicochemical Study of Automotive Catalysts for Emission Control

Abstract

Preface: This thesis is concerning the automotive catalysts to remove the harmful emission from automotive engines. Today, the automobile society is growing on the global scale, and vehicles are essential to make our living more convenient and richer. On the other hand, vehicles have a great effect on the global environment and natural resources. Recently, due to increasing demands for global environmental protection, more stringent regulations have been imposed on the automobile industry. Automobile companies are striving to purify automobile exhaust emissions. Consequently, there is a strong demand to produce more advanced automotive catalysts by technical innovation. Here, the author presents the physicochemical study of automotive catalysts. Using advanced analysis techniques such as synchrotron radiation analysis can make it possible to design catalysts for practical use, rather than adopting a trial-and-error approach. The author hopes that his studies can pave the way for planed catalytic design in the future. In the near future, this approach of designing catalysts at an atomic level by using advanced synchrotron radiation analysis must enable the realization of an ultimate clean car which completely removes harmful components from exhaust gases. The present study has been carried out in the catalyst laboratory at the TOYOTA Central R&D Labs. Inc. (TCRDL) during the years 1999-2006. During this time, the author has been in charge of the development of new automotive catalysts. The main subject of his work was “Synchrotron radiation analysis of automotive catalysts”. The aims of the project were the knowledge on the relationship between catalytic activity and the atomic structure, and the development of more advanced catalysts. The author started the synchrotron radiation analysis at SPring-8 (Hyogo, Japan) in 1999. After that, he also carried out the synchrotron radiation experiment at ESRF (Grenoble, France) and PF (Tsukuba, Japan). The author has met many people and gained a lot of experience.