ИСТИНА

Transportation was always considered a threat to the environment. Indeed, car exhausts pollute the air and, indirectly, water and soil. The car of the future will be, most probably, based on a different energy source (electricity, hydrogen, for example), but the environment is sentenced to suffer from the gasoline and diesel cars for at least 20-30 years from now. Also, production and use on board of electricity and hydrogen may turn to be not less harmful to the nature, at least in terms of the CO2 foot print. One of the problems of the today car is the cold-start emissions, i.e. the exhausts containing hydrocarbons during a few minutes since the start of the engine. Actually, 90% of overall hydrocarbon emissions of cars fall within the cold-start period. The three-way catalyst eliminates CO, hydrocarbons and NOx during the stable regime of operation, but it does not solve the problem of exhausts during the cold-start period. The problem can be solved by the use of an adsorbent capable of capturing hydrocarbons (toluene and the like) in the temperature range from -20 to +300oC (even in the presence of water) and keeping the adsorbed pollutant until the catalyst approaches the stable regime (+300oC). Zeolites and zeolite-like materials, as well as other mesoporous nano-engineered adsorbents are the materials of choice for this application. The second problem is the capture of evaporating light fractions of gasoline from the fuel tank and comminucating pipelines. Ten percent of gasoline is evaporated and is released to the environment (the gasoline consumption in Russia on the world scale). Adsorbents with enhanced adsorption capacity capable of releasing the adsorbed hydrocarbons at rather low temperatures (<100oC) at a high rate are in strong demand. Again diverse nano-engineered micro- and mesoporous materials can be used to cope with this problem. The third task to be solved by nanoadsorbents is the comfort atmosphere inside the car compartment, including capture of CO2, harmful components of air and control of humidity.