Should we ban the catalytic converter?
The catalytic converter is a good example of engineering our way to cleaner cars. What am I saying? It may be the single, shinning, GREAT example of green car technology. That little thing that fits in your exhaust pipe has kept pollution out of the air since its introduction in 1975. Heck, in the process of keeping the air clean, it has probably saved countless lives. You hear arguments between government and car companies about things like CAFE all the time. No arguments about the catalytic converter (today, anyway). Everyone is ready to take credit for that one and wish they could repeat it. I say it's time we talk about banning it.
Actually, this is largely a thought experiment and I am not really ready to call for a ban on the catalytic converter. Let's see what it would take for someone to consider a ban. There are criticisms of the catalytic converter mostly about its production which you can see in the video above. Catalytic converters use the rare metal platinum which takes half a year to refine, a process that includes digging miles of tunnels, transport of materials and chemical processing.
You probably could never make a fair comparison about which is worse (mining or exhaust pollution) because the comparison would always be apples and oranges. Even if you felt stronger about the destruction of land through mining than air pollution, you still have to consider the mine is very far away from where a lot of drivers live. Also, we can develop cleaner mining methods or repair a mining site because a single location is controlled easier than millions of cars. What if mining was only getting dirtier and could not be controlled? What would it take for you to consider a ban on the catalytic converter? Sound off in comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mike Sherback 12:40AM (2/12/2008)
Some Swedes did a life cycle analysis and found that they are not necessarily a good idea. "At the current recycling rate, two of the three weighting methods used in this study indicate that the environmental impacts such as resource depletion and waste generation are not less important than the air emissions reduced at the car exhaust pipe. As its name implies, a “catalytic converter” is a “converter”. From a global and life cycle perspective, the catalytic converter is “converting” rather than reducing the environmental impacts. The results show that it is converting exhaust emissions from one place to environmental impacts in other places of the world."
find by googling
doi:10.1016/S0959-6526(00)00082-2
when you consider that they also cost money, drive up platinum costs hurting fuel cells, and not least, create hostility of ordinary people against environmental regulations, there is a good case to be made. This is not 1975, when the roads were full of carbureted beasts running rich; today emissions pre-cat are reduced by a working 02 sensor feedback loop keeping the mixture correct.
Subject to verifying that the Swedes did their jobs correctly, and with the recycling rate caveat, I think that they should at least not be required to be replaced on otherwise environmentally OK cars that are nearing their end-of-life in areas without smog problems. That is, don't make poor people in Iowa scrap their '93 Toyota Corollas over a cat. Asking people to spend a week's pay or three to add a part to their car that doesn't make it go, and may not even help the environment, is indefensible.
or improve the catalysts.
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Mike Sherback 5:28PM (2/14/2008)
I got my hands on the pdf of the Swede report. It is actually less than fully convincing if you assume a high recycling rate and don't somehow account for the idea that the platinum is more useful elsewhere. In other words, neglecting platinum scarcity and assuming a 90% recycling rate, they are good. Are they good to the tune of the $5-700 or so that Americans are charge for replacements? That is a still more convoluted question. Might it be better to keep the Pt group metal prices low to stimulate fuel cell development? In the end, I don't really feel like a legal requirement to replace them is ironclad justified/smart.
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Mac 9:24AM (3/25/2008)
I am thinking about recycling a catalytic converter in this way: putting a second-hand (scrapped from an out-of-circulation car), therefore Pt-mined already catalytic converter bigger than required by car engine.
In this way, we do not increase the Pt mining demand (we reuse the ones already in circulation), and we further diminishes the un-burnt fuel polutants with a higher catalytic conversion.
Do you think this is a positive idea?
Mac.
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Benjamin Jones 3:57PM (1/10/2008)
If you look at the CVCC, which allowed Honda to break into the US market by having cheap (non-cat equipped) cars while still meeting emissions standards, you might be tempted to think that we could just build a more efficient cars, and leave out the catalytic converter.
Tempting argument, yes, but you have to think of it more as a safety net. Airbags would be less necessary with better drivers, but even then, you'd want one for that every so often type of incident. Cats are most valuable in old cars, where things fall out of tune and your car isn't always working in peak condition.
Another plus for the cat is that almost all of them are recycled, :p
------
Benjamin Jones
http://ecomodder.com
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ug 4:06PM (1/10/2008)
We wouldn't even need them anymore if all cars were electric.
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kert 4:06PM (1/10/2008)
Heres the thing: Moon and asteroids are full of resources like platinum, and other rare and expensive metals. Being a certified space development nut, i propose lets stop digging the earth up for these, and reach out in space to bring em home.
News: NASA isnt working on the problem, they got their heads firmly in the sand in regards to space resource exploitation. Read a book like Dennis Wingos Moonrush or go to permanent.com or isruinfo.com to read up on that stuff.
There is a lot of environmental and ultimately economic sense to go digging in the asteroid belt, not the earths crust.
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steven 4:06PM (1/10/2008)
Honda was clean without one in the early days, but as things toughened up, they had to get in line. I guess fewer and fewer folks in the US wanted 1545 lb cars with 1.2l engines.
The irony is a lot of emissions equipment has had such a negative impact on gas mileage. Kinda like what we'll see when the new diesels finally make it through to all 50 states. The mileage is not going to be as impressive as was expected.
Is there a "sweet spot" where better gas mileage with fewer emission controls results in less pollution than lower gas mileage with more emission controls? Not to mention those extra nasty chemicals they try to add to gasoline in the spirit of cleaner tailpipes that makes the vapors that much more dangerous to us and the environment.
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kert 4:08PM (1/10/2008)
Here is a popular media article to illustrate my point:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm
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Karkus 4:19PM (1/10/2008)
Please do some basic thinking and research before posting stuff like this. Sure, Pt mining can be bad. But so can all kinds of other mining, and most of the products you buy have metals or ceramics or semiconductors in it, many of which contain elements in it that were mined at some point. Should we ban everything?
If you follow your link for Norilsk, you find:
"Norilsk is the center of a region where nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and coal are mined."
OK, let's ban copper wires and coal (no more electricity, computers, etc. etc.), nickel (no more stainless steel, desalination plants, or NiMH batteries), cobalt (no more alloys for jet engines and turbines), Pt and PD (no more catalyst for many reactions including oil cracking, jewelery, dentistry, etc.)
If you ban everything that has any of those things in it, you couldn't make much of anything. Duh.
That's like people who say "Chemicals are BAD" and don't realize their body consists of tons of chemicals, water is a chemical, etc. etc.
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kert 4:52PM (1/10/2008)
Like i said, the cure to mining damages is not to mine the earth, but sky. Seriously.
The first company to pull off a successful lunar or asteroid mining ops will be richer than Microsoft ever was.
Its no coincidence than the "Enterpreneur of the Year, Elon Musk" is investing in space, and a lot of other dot-com millionares like Microsofts Paul Allen, Amazons Jeff Bezos, or even ID Softwares John Carmack are now investing and working on space too.
Space is where the worlds energy and resource needs can be ultimately answered. Lets get cracking.
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Karkus 4:59PM (1/10/2008)
ug...
Electric cars contain just as many metals as regular cars, and maybe even more of the "bad" ones. Most of the weight of any car is metals. Metals are pretty much all mined. In fact electric cars require more Copper (mined at Norilsk - BAD), and batteries, which tend to contain bad metals. Let's look at some common batteries - Lead acid (lead = BAD for you) , NiCad_(Ni Norilsk- BAD, Cadmium -very toxic - even WORSE), NiMetalHydride (Ni Norilsk - BAD), Li ion (often contain Cobalt - Norilsk-BAD).
There's no way to classify anything as Green once you start looking into what's in your car or technology gadget or whatever. It all has an environmental cost.
Having said that, there are people who have spent lots of time/effort doing good comparisons of environmental costs of various technologies. You can't just use one aspect (like which metals are used and where they MIGHT have come from to form a conclusion.) A post about an issue like this should include references to such studies (instead of a link to an unreferenced Wiki source, which anyone could have put in there).
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slashdog 7:01PM (1/10/2008)
Don't be stupid, mining is generally bad for the environment, but it can be kept reasonably clean with regulation. I don't think anyone here is arguing that mining should be stopped, but should we swap one form of pollution for another?
So i think the argument here is, "Is the pollution created by mining and refining of platinum, less or more acceptable than the pollution saved by cats". I suspect that mining is worse, though i could be wrong. I'd like to see some studies on it.
Its the common problem of introducing a 'green' solution, that actually just moves the pollution elsewhere (in this case to Russia). So really all we are doing with cats is instead of nasty LA smog we get nasty Norilsk acid rain and heavy metal pollution.
Whats worse? and should rich country's be able to essentially 'sell' its pollution indirectly overseas? All questions that should be considered.
Its important to remember that while the west has lowered its production of pollution (other than CO2) we have basically moved it to the developing world (most obviously china) where a the bulk of consumer products are now made.
It might be a hard idea to grasp for some, but we all live in this world together, and we should take responsibility for our collective actions internationally, not just locally.
I don't have any answers but I would love for more people to THINK.
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slashdog 7:01PM (1/10/2008)
YAY KARKUS!
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Sree 5:23PM (1/10/2008)
Well .. Why dont we just ban the Gas car itself.
Just get one of those revolutionary TATA Nano cars
costs just 2500$ and no exhausts .. saves money as well
http://www.google.com/search?q=tata+nano+car
-Sree
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Chris M 6:18PM (1/10/2008)
There are other uses for platinum and similar metals found in the same mines, so even without catalytic converters, mining would continue. Of course, if H2 fuel cell cars ever come to market, the demand for platinum will soar.
Sorry, Kert, but "space mining" would require more earth resources, and might cause more environmental damage, due to the really really big rocket ships needed. Unless there is an unbelievable drop in costs (not likely any time soon) it would cost far more to mine asteroids or the moon than the metals would be worth. Worse, while geological processes have made rich ore seams here on earth, those processes haven't occured on the moon, so no ritch platinum ores to be found there.
Sree: The "Tata Nano" uses a 2 cylinder 33 hp petrol engine, so it does indeed have emissions. No, the Nano is not the fabled "air car", Tata has not yet offered one for sale. Due to the high cost carbon fiber pressure tank the air car will cost several times more than the Nano, if it ever comes to market.
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Tony Belding 8:24AM (1/11/2008)
Asteroid mining is an interesting idea. Up to now the high cost and high risk has kept it from taking off. If Bussard's fusion reactor works as hoped, we could see a huge decrease (multiple orders of magnitude) in the cost of space flight, and the economic balance could actually tilt in favor of asteroid mining.
One could imagine a future where fusion reactors are used to create hydrogen (from water) and fusion rockets bring back the asteroidal platinum for all those automotive fuel cells. But. . . Even if the reactor works as hoped, that's a vision several decades down the road. We have urgent problems we need to solve today.
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rob 7:31PM (1/10/2008)
Add this to your thought experiment:
Least cost end use: What are we using all that platinum, ruthenium and palladium for? Can the same task be done better at lower cost? Just how much better and cheaper?
Mazda recently announced that they can produce a catalytic converter that requires 100x less of the precious metals. In fact, I think it was blogged about on this very site.
If you can recycle every existing catalytic converter into 100 new ones, surely that's cheaper than mining the asteroids or moon, isn't it? In fact, it would (most likely, will) crash the world market for noble metals and close most if not all of the mines...
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Lad 2:03AM (1/11/2008)
The real problem with cats is they operate in a narrow air to fuel ratio range of about 14.7:1 which doesn't allow for lean burning in the ICE. Lean burn engines could save a lot of fuel.
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TG 3:10AM (1/11/2008)
Many of the comments here are more emotional rather than accurate. Easy to rebut some claims like. . . Krakus said ..
**Electric cars contain just as many metals as regular cars, and maybe even more of the "bad" ones.**
Aw c*mon. No motor block, rad, gas tank, Lead acid battery, oil sump, cat & muffler, and too much more to list.
You named every battery poison going, yet the ideal battery is one of the many shades of Li-Ion battery without cobalt and all are earth friendly.
Electric motors use copper yet 98% or more is recycled. The system for copper is one of the best.
Li-ion battery packs last 8 to 10 years and at 85% they are traded in for use as peak demand buffers in public buildings.
If you hate electric cars for some reason, keep in mind you have the option of a used Paris Taxi that runs on compressed air.
Sorry if you work in the ICE auto business but change is the only certain thing in life.
Either enjoy it or step aside. = TG
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kert 5:04AM (1/11/2008)
::Unless there is an unbelievable drop in costs (not likely any time soon) it would cost far more to mine asteroids or the moon than the metals would be worth.
Thats where the catch is. Even at current launch prices, it would be possible to pull off a net positive operations. Without your assertion for "big rockets".
And space launch costs have room to drop many orders of magnitude, once this market gets a way from government run business model. Do some simple research on *why* launch costs are currently what they are, and you'll see what i mean.
eventually, we will be forced to reach for space resources anyway, once earthly ones run too thin to be economical to mine for, and recycling does not yield enough anymore due to too much dilution.
The one that first figures economic approach to this ( right combination of teleoperated robotics and infrequent maintenance, right launch combinations etc ) will be richer than rich.
Like i said, our green enterpreneur, backer of Tesla Motors Elon Musk has figured out that the space is the next important field of challenge too, and thats why he is already wreaking havoc on launch market, trying to undercut competition prices by an order of magnitude.
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