• Question: How much does it cost to create catalytic converters? Can you make enough to fight climate change?

    Asked by ses to Georgina on 12 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Georgina Brogden

      Georgina Brogden answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      A catalytic converter costs a few hundred pounds. You can definitely make lots of them. It’s illegal to drive a petrol or diesel car that doesn’t have a catalytic converter in it, so every car has one.
      The purpose of a catalytic converter is to remove gases that are dangerous to breathe, like carbon monoxide. This is how they make the air cleaner and save lives. Catalytic converters do not remove CO2, so do not help fight global warming.

Comments

  • Photo: Alexander

    Alexander commented on :

    Additionally, catalytic converters can also combust un-burnt fuel, filter-out exhaust soot and decompose NOx to N2 and H2O – as Georgina said, contributing to cleaner air.

  • Photo: Andrew

    Andrew commented on :

    I’d disagree a little with Georgina in regards to catalytic converters not fighting global warming.

    Each gas has a different warming potential based on its structure and the time it spends in the atmosphere. Gases with simple structures that are swiftly lost from the atmosphere have low global warming potentials, more complex gases and those that spend long times in the atmosphere have greater warming effects. CO2 is taken as a baseline and has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 1 – it’s a very simple gas and rather poor at storing heat, but it hangs around a long time. By comparision methane, CH4, is little more complex and hangs around a fair while, giving it a GWP of 21; and nitrous oxide, N2O, persists for a very long time giving it a GWP of 114. A molecule of N2O will be responsible for 114 times the global warming of a molecule of CO2.

    A catalytic converter changes these enduring and more complex molecules like methane and nitrous oxide into simpler or less enduring ones like CO2, nitrogen and water. They can’t stop global warming in the sense that they can’t remove the CO2, but they can slow the rate of global warming by reducing the warming potential of the gases produced by vehicles. It doesn’t solve the problem and no number of catalytic converts will, but they buy us a little more time to develop better and more sustainable alternative technologies to internal combustion engines. It’s a case of making the best of a bad situation. A reduction, not a cure.