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Show December26, 1999 AS MITto Test Emissions Controller Plasmatron will work as vehicle refinery BY EARL LANE NEWSDAY WASHINGTON — It sounds like something outof an oldsci-fi movie. But the plasmatron, a device under development for several years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may one day help reduce smog-producing emissions from cars and other vehicles. Researchers told a recent STARTSTOMORROW AT9A.M. INTER _ CLEARANCE SAL meeting of the American Physical Society that they had moved a significant step closer to taking the device from the laboratory to the highway. “We're ready to take the show on the road,” said Daniel Cohn, headof the plasma technology division at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Hesaid the team plans to roadtest the plasmatronwithin a year, after demonstrating recently that it can be installed on a commer- cial car engine. The team is plan- ning totest the device on a bus. The piasmatron, aboutthe size of a winebottle, works as a sort of on-board oil refinery to convert ordinary hydrocarbonfuel into a hydrogen-rich gas. That gas, when added in small amounts to the ordinary fuel from which it was made, produces a mixture that burns efficiently and cleanly. Researchers say that emissions of ON ALREADY REDUCED MERCHANDISE 1) pollutants such as nitrogen oxide could be reduced tenfold by cars equipped with plasmatrons, In principle, all the fuel in a tank could be converted to the hydrogen-rich gas. But since the conversion process takes energy, the researchers say it is more cost-effective to convert only a fractionofthe fuel. How It Works: Inside a plas- matron, an arc of electricity ignites the fuel and surrounding air into a plasma — a hotcollection of electrically charged plasma accelerates reactions that generate a hydrogen-rich gas. That gas can then be fed along with the ordinary, untreated gasoline to the combustion chambers in the tible than ordinary gasoline alone,allowing the engine to burn gasoline more completely and with less pollution. Engineers have known for years that adding hydrogento fuel makes engines run more cleanly. CHOOSE FROM There have been proposals to use hydrogen gas alone as a fuel, but developing the proper storage medium to carry sufficient amounts WOMEN’S SPORTSWEAR, BOY'S & GIRL’S, of the gas continues to be a challenge. The MIT researchers sidestep that problem by using the hydrogen using the car’s normal fuel supply. Plasmatrons traditionally have been used to produce hydrogenrich gas for industrial applications such as metals processing. Those devices have been quite large — aboutthe size of a car en- gine — and impractical for im- proving automotive emission performance. The MIT team has Z-ATTITUDE SPORTSWEAR, ~ come up with a much more compact design and recently tested it for two weeks on a car engine. Alexander Rabinovich, an engineer at MIT, said the device ran reliably for four to six hours a day with no deterioration. The researchers found a marked reduc- ~ ACCESSORIES AND MEN’S SPORTSWEAR tion in emission of pollutants during the test Emissions Control: Nitrogen oxide emissions were cut more than a hundredfold, from an average of 2,700 parts per million withoutthe plasmatron to 20 parts per million with the device. The reductions are not expected to be as dramatic in standard cars /M u ‘Suor aut svores Monoay 9 5..@ pat., Tuesnar minouan Thursoay 10 A.u.-0 pai, Frmory 10 a.u.-6 pa, Sarunony, New Year's Day Noon-5 ra. (excert ZCMiI Il-Footiiu.: Mom THROUGH THunsnay 10 AsO rat, Fomor 10 Aa.-6 pat. en cuneen Saruneer Mew Year's Der, ano $x. Geonce Dowwrown: Mosoay THROUGH Fraary 9 Auw.-B rat., SATURDAY 9 A.0t.-6 Pit), Coneee Samm, ‘Oroen ay prone: be Savy Lane, 579-6666 evsewnene 0 Uva ano mt THE U.S. 1-800-759-6656 \ 4 ‘ 4 Sate |
