Search Results

Aerogels are nanoporous structures with physical characteristics that make them promising for use in automotive exhaust catalysis systems: highly porous with low densities (<0.1 g/mL) and high surface area per unit mass (>300 m2/g) - features that provide favorable characteristics for catalysis of gaseous pollutants. Ceramic aerogels are also highly thermally insulating (∼0.015 W/mK) and able to withstand high temperatures. Aerogels can be made of a wide variety of ceramics (e.g. alumina, silica, titania) with other catalytically active metals (e.g. copper, cobalt, nickel) incorporated into their structures. This paper provides a brief overview of the rapid supercritical extraction (RSCE) method employed in this work for aerogel preparation, describes in detail the benchtop scale testbed and methods used to assess the catalytic activity of RSCE fabricated aerogels, and presents data on the catalytic ability of some promising aerogel chemistries.