John J. Mooney
John J. Mooney (c. 1929) is an American chemical engineer and co-inventor of the three-way catalyst.
Early life and education
Mooney grew up in Paterson, New Jersey. After graduation, he worked for ten years for the " Public Service Electric and Gas Company" ( PSE & G ), while at the same time he attended the " Seton Hall University ", in which he acquired his " Bachelor of Science" degree in 1955.
After several years in the United States Army, he resumed his education at the Newark College of Engineering ( now New Jersey Institute of Technology) again, his visit he graduated with a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering in 1960. In 1992, Mooney also earned a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University while he worked at Engelhard.
Mooney was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2007 from his alma mater, the " New Jersey Institute of Technology," for his achievements in the fields of environmental protection and the automotive industry.
Career
During his service in the Army of the United States 1955-1956 Mooney was assigned to a series of nuclear tests in the Pacific on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where 17 nuclear bombs and two hydrogen bombs were detonated.
After his training, Mooney came in 1960 to Engelhard, where he worked for the gas plant department. Among his first tasks included the purification of hydrogen, as well as studies on the decomposition of ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen, and a method of using a ruthenium catalyst for the production of hydrogen from liquid ammonia for the United States Air Force. Subsequently the supply of a weather balloon with hydrogen was simplified, since it was more efficient and easier to transport the liquid ammonia instead of hydrogen.
In 1970, there were changes in the Clean Air Act, which required considerable limitations of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The then current converter were pure oxidation catalysts, which were able to reduce carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, but were ineffective in reducing nitric oxides.
Automobile manufacturers and catalyst manufacturers tried first, with several steps to develop methods in which first the hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide were reduced and then the nitrogen oxides.
In 1973, the chemist Carl D. Keith and John Mooney go with her team at Engelhard, the first production of a three-way catalyst. This allowed the simultaneous elimination of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides with a single catalyst. The solution to deal with the variations of the air -fuel mixture, the combination of rare earth oxides such as cerium oxide as an oxygen storage component having platinum and rhodium on aluminum oxide in a ceramic honeycomb body.
This design ensured that the required oxygen from the rare earth oxides could be released and the oxidation reactions was available. In excess oxygen, the reduced oxides were regenerated. The three-way catalyst reduces nitrogen oxides to nitrogen, the oxygen contained in the oxides of nitrogen and oxygen from the combustion air and the storage components of oxidizing carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide and unburnt hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide and water.
Awards
Mooney was elected in 1990 for his efforts to exhaust emission control Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE ). In 2001 he was awarded for his work on the development and commercialization of the three-way catalyst with Keith Walter Ahlstrom Prize, which is awarded in cooperation with the Finnish Academies of Technology. Estimates are that up to the award phase by developed by Keith and Mooney converter 56 million tons of hydrocarbons, 118 million tons of nitrogen oxides and 464 billion tons of carbon monoxide from car exhaust in the 25 years have been converted since the introduction.
Together with Keith Mooney was awarded by the " United States Patent and Trademark Office " in 2002, the " National Medal of Technology ".
Mooney 17 holds patents, besides that of a catalyst for two-stroke engines, which is used for example, in chain saws, lawn mowers, leaf blowers and.
As president of the " Environmental and Energy Technology and Policy Institute " Mooney worked in partnership with the " United Nations Environment Program " to achieve an end to the use of leaded gasoline all over the world. In 2002 there were 51 countries in Africa, where leaded gasoline was still in use was. Through work on issues around the Ventilsitzhärtung and evidence that lead does not solve the problem in the fuel, now 50 of these states have the use of leaded gasoline banned.
Mooney has lived since 2003, after 43 years of service to Engelhard, in retirement in Wyckoff, New Jersey.