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Carl D. Keith, a co-inventor of the three-way automotive catalytic converter--a major advance in eliminating the toxic tailpipe emissions that once blanketed cities in smog--died earlier this month while visiting one of his daughters in New Bern, N.C., according to a report in The New York Times. He was 88 and lived on Marco Island in Florida.


Working with John J. Mooney and a team of other chemical engineers at the Engelhard Corporation, one of the world's largest mineral refining companies, Keith designed the three-way catalytic converter in the early 1970s, just as the stricter emission requirements of the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970 were coming into effect.


"Billions of people around the world breathe cleaner air because of this invention," Margo Oge, director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the Environmental Protection Agency, told the Times.


The three-way converter was a significant improvement over what is called the oxidizing converter, the patent for which is held by General Motors. The three-way is now standard for cars and light trucks made worldwide.


A catalytic converter is a can-shaped device installed beneath a vehicle as part of the exhaust pipe. Inside the converter, a bricklike ceramic honeycomb with hundreds of tiny passages is coated with a catalyst material, typically platinum or palladium. When the exhaust flows out of the engine and passes over and through the catalyst coating, a chemical reaction renders three toxic compounds harmless.


The oxidizing converter worked for two of those compounds, turning carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide and water. The three-way device designed by Keith and his colleagues added the conversion of nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and water, greatly reducing the emission of harmful particulates into the air.


According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, today's automobiles are 98 percent cleaner in terms of nitrogen oxide emissions than those built in the 1970s, "and the three-way catalytic converter is the greatest contributor to that reduction."

Tags: Emissions, General Motors, Carl D. Keith, Catalytic Converter, Emissions, General Motors, GM

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Carl D. Keith, a Co-Inventor of the 3-Way Automotive Catalytic Converter, Dies at 88 was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.