Diesel engines are preferred over gasoline engines owing to their fuel efficiency. However, diesel engines are known to emit higher volumes of noxious pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitric oxide (NO) commonly referred to as NOx pollutants.
The detrimental effect of these emissions was further substantiated with the World Health Organization amending the categorization of diesel engine emission as carcinogenic for humans, thereby putting it in the same league of asbestos and cigarette smoke.
Many countries have also issued guidelines to bring about reductions in diesel emissions in the next decade. Until now, the rare and costly metal, platinum has been incorporated in diesel engines to bring down the emissions. Platinum is considered a precious metal as it is limited in supply and is expensive to mine. Engineers at Nanostellar have been attempting to find a replacement for platinum in diesel engines. The team succeeded in their study when they identified a cheaper alternative from the oxide family called mullite.
Nanostellar is the company co-founded by a University of Texas professor, Dr. Kyeongjae Cho. His team found that incorporating mullite reduced diesel engine emission by 45% in comparison to platinum. Also, the material is easy to produce. The material will be launched in the market under the name Noxicat. The team will now work on extending the application of mullite to fuel cells.
Source: http://www.utdallas.edu/