Johnson Matthey CRT™ particulate filter wins Britain’s MacRobert Award
2 November 2000
Johnson Matthey announced it has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award for the development and commercialization of its CRT™ particulate filter for heavy-duty diesel engines.
The Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, comparable in stature to awards from the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science here in the United States, recognizes scientific and engineering innovation that has been successfully commercialized and brings a significant benefit to society.
The CRT particulate filter team, Barry Cooper, Pelham Hawker, Jim Thoss and Par Jones, will receive the MacRobert Award on 30 November 2000 at Buckingham Palace. HRH Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh will present the award.
Johnson Matthey previously won the Award in 1980 for the development of the three-way catalyst. Barry Cooper was also a member of that team and becomes the first individual to win the Award twice in the 31-year history of the MacRobert Award.
The CRT particulate filter is a patented emission control technology that contains a platinum-coated catalyst and a particulate filter, engineered as a totally passive emission control system. The CRT particulate filter removes more than 85% of the particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from diesel exhaust.
Mounted in the vehicle’s exhaust system in the same location as the muffler or catalytic converter, the CRT particulate filter is made up of two chambers. The first chamber contains a substrate coated with a highly active Pt oxidation catalyst which is designed to oxidize a portion of the NO in the exhaust to NO2, which is the key to the elimination of soot collected by the CRT filter. This is the basis of the JM patent. The catalyst also converts CO and HC into CO2 and H2O. In the second chamber, the exhaust flows through a particulate filter, where gaseous components pass through but soot is trapped on the walls of the filter, where it is destroyed by the NO2 produced by the catalyst in the first chamber.
Over 13,000 CRT particulate filters are currently in service in Europe, the United States and the Far East.
Source: Johnson Matthey