QU faculty gets new patent to remove carbon monoxide from car exhaust

Prof Siham Yousuf A Alqaradawi, a professor of Organic Chemistry at Qatar University's (QU) College of Arts and Sciences has got a new patent on how to remove toxic carbon monoxide emitted through car exhaust by its catalytic conversion into less toxic carbon dioxide.

"The catalyst reported herein may have potential application as a component of the three-way catalytic converters," she has explained in a statement from QU. Indirect application may include purification of hydrogen gas in the methane reforming process for fuel cells systems or removal of CO poisoning in carbon dioxide laser systems.

The tailored CuO/TiO2 NT (cupric oxide/titanium dioxide nanotubes) composition constitutes an active and stable catalyst to convert the highly toxic carbon monoxide in exhaust or flue gas to less toxic carbon dioxide without the need to utilise the high cost precious metals such as platinum, gold or palladium that are well-known for their superior catalytic activity.

"Our catalyst provides comparable activity and higher stability compared to plasmonic metals-based catalysts and suffers much less from the thermally-induced sintering, typically observed for gold or platinum-based conversion catalysts," Dr Alqaradawi said.

"Our catalysts can be produced at large scale in a scalable fashion through environmentally and economically-friendly approach," she added.