The newest catalytic converters in diesel engines blast away a pollutant from combustion with the help of ammonia. Common in European cars, the engines exhaust harmless nitrogen and water. How they do this hasn’t been entirely clear until now. New research shows that the catalyst attacks its target pollutant in an unusual way, by coming at the target from the side rather than head on like similar bacterial enzymes.
“What I find exciting is the correlation between this artificial catalysis and enzyme catalysis,” said Szanyi, lead chemist in the project at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.”Nature is telling us what to do. Nature’s been at it for many millions of years, and it does this beautifully.”
Read the original article from PNNL here.