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Houdry first developed catalytic converters for smokestacks, called "cats" for short, and later developed catalytic converters for warehouse forklifts that used low grade, unleaded gasoline. When the results of early studies of smog in Los Angeles were published, Houdry became concerned about the role of smokestack exhaust and automobile exhaust in air pollution and founded a company called Oxy-Catalyst. Houdry moved to the United States in 1930 to live near the refineries in the Philadelphia area and develop his catalytic refining process. Houdry was an expert in catalytic oil refining, having invented the catalytic cracking process that all modern refining is based on today. A few decades later, a catalytic converter was patented by Eugene Houdry, a French mechanical engineer. This is usually in response to government regulation, either through environmental regulation or through health and safety regulations.Ĭatalytic converter prototypes were first designed in France at the end of the 19th century, when only a few thousand "oil cars" were on the roads these prototypes had inert clay-based materials coated with platinum, rhodium, and palladium and sealed into a double metallic cylinder. They are even used on some wood stoves to control emissions. Although two-way converters on gasoline engines were rendered obsolete in 1981 by "three-way" converters that also reduce oxides of nitrogen ( NO x) they are still used on lean-burn engines to oxidize particulate matter and hydrocarbon emissions (including Diesel engines, which typically use lean combustion), as three-way-converters require fuel-rich or stoichiometric combustion to successfully reduce NO x.Īlthough catalytic converters are most commonly applied to exhaust systems in automobiles, they are also used on electrical generators, forklifts, mining equipment, trucks, buses, locomotives, motorcycles, and on ships. These "two-way" converters combine oxygen with carbon monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC) to produce carbon dioxide (CO 2) and water (H 2O).

Environmental Protection Agency's stricter regulation of exhaust emissions, most gasoline-powered vehicles starting with the 1975 model year are equipped with catalytic converters. The first widespread introduction of catalytic converters was in the United States automobile market. Catalytic converters are usually used with internal combustion engines fueled by gasoline or diesel, including lean-burn engines, and sometimes on kerosene heaters and stoves.

A three-way catalytic converter on a gasoline-powered 1996 Dodge Ram Simulation of flow inside a catalytic converterĪ catalytic converter is an exhaust emission control device that converts toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas from an internal combustion engine into less-toxic pollutants by catalyzing a redox reaction.