 | Home > Off Topic > John Mooney, a father of the catalytic converter, dies at 90 |
 
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| Supacat Member Since: 16 Oct 2012 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 11018   
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A bloke I hadn't heard of until reading about his death; but probably touched more people's lives in a positive way than most of us could ever dream of doing.
 Click image to enlarge https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obitu...story.html "John J. Mooney, a co-inventor of the three-way catalytic converter, the emission control device that became standard equipment on nearly every automobile, truck and motorcycle and played a major role in drastically reducing air pollution caused by automobile exhaust, died June 16 at his home in Wyckoff, N.J. He was 90. The cause was complications of a stroke, said his daughter Elizabeth Mooney Convery. The breakthrough invention, which Mr. Mooney created in the 1970s with fellow chemical engineer Carl D. Keith, was credited with removing billions of tons of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides from the air we breathe. An Environmental Protection Agency report in the early 2000s estimated that Mr. Mooney’s invention helped save 100,000 lives and eliminate hundreds of thousands of cases of throat and lung ailments caused by the emissions of the internal combustion engine. “Billions of people around the world breathe cleaner air because of this invention,” Margo T. Oge, director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the EPA, told the New York Times in 2008. At the same time, the device dramatically improved gasoline mileage in motor vehicles around the world. Mr. Mooney, an executive in Iselin, N.J., at Engelhard Corp. (now part of the German chemical manufacturer BASF), wasn’t content with simply helping to invent the device; he became a globe-trotting evangelist for it who helped commercialize the product by persuading automobile makers to put it in their vehicles. He also lobbied the gasoline industry to cease adding lead to gasoline to enhance octane, thus helping to eliminate another dangerous pollutant. Responding to new requirements for reduced auto emissions in the Clean Air Act of 1970, Mr. Mooney and Keith led a team of Engelhard engineers in the development of the first wave of production catalytic converters in 1973. These appeared on 1975-model cars. A year later, the team unveiled the three-way catalyst, which dramatically improved the original design. The original converters neutralized hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide but were unable to treat nitrogen oxides, a major pollutant. Finding a method for destroying all three toxins was dicey. What was required to eliminate the first two turned out to be the exact opposite of what was needed to get rid of the third. One method adds oxygen, the other eliminates the oxygen. The engineers managed to create a catalyst that could scrub away all three toxins at the same time, which proved to be the winning technology that changed the automotive industry. It was an arduous four-year process. “It was a challenging experience,” Mr. Mooney told the Record newspaper in New Jersey in 2001. “You had to look at things inside and out and upside down. Nothing ever flowed perfectly.” By 2001, the device had destroyed an estimated 56 million tons of hydrocarbons, 118 million tons of nitrogen oxides and 464 billion tons of carbon dioxide before they reached the atmosphere. According to the EPA, cars with catalytic converters were 95 percent environmentally cleaner than cars of the 1970s. Today, the three-way catalytic converter has been installed on more than 80 percent of all new cars around the world. For their efforts, the two men received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President George W. Bush in 2002. Commenting on the innovation, Clifford P. Weisel, a professor at Rutgers University’s Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, described the catalytic converter as one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. The phasing out of lead from gasoline “resulted in a dramatic decrease in lead air levels, lead deposition to soil and therefore exposure to lead,” he wrote in an email. “Lead affects the brain, particularly of children, and is still one of our major environmental health issues in the U.S. and globally.” Mr. Mooney embarked on his international efforts in 1971, a mission he continued through the rest of his career, to persuade nations to reduce air pollution and eliminate lead from gasoline. According to a 2005 interview with Chemical Engineering Progress magazine, he claimed to have made more than 100 trips to the Far East, 150 to Europe, 20 to India and 15 to China as well as South America and Africa to spread the word. He was intent on educating Japanese and European auto manufacturers about the need to install catalytic converters in their vehicles, an effort that went on for more than a decade. “I feel my greatest contribution to the world was convincing countries to remove lead from gasoline,” he told the publication. “Lead in auto exhaust caused children in urban areas to lose up to 10 IQ points, and caused hypertension and serious heart problems for adults.” After retiring from Engelhard in the early 2000s, he co-founded and served as president of the Environmental and Energy Technology and Policy Institute, and he worked closely with the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles of the United Nations Environment Program to help end the use of leaded gasoline around the world. In 2002, 51 countries in sub-Saharan Africa were still using leaded gasoline. In part because of Mr. Mooney’s efforts, 50 of those 51 nations banned leaded gasoline by the end of 2006. John Joseph Mooney was born in Paterson, N.J., on April 6, 1930, the oldest of six siblings. His father was a utility lineman, and his mother became a nurse after her husband died in 1953. The next year, Mr. Mooney received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., and married Claire Ververs. In addition to his wife and daughter, survivors include four other children; a sister; 14 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. During a year of Army service after college, Mr. Mooney was stationed at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific to monitor nuclear tests. He obtained a master’s degree in chemical engineering in 1960 from what was then the Newark College of Engineering (now the New Jersey Institute of Technology) and joined Engelhard. He received an MBA in marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1992. In the mid-1990s, he created a four-person team at Engelhard to develop emission controls for two-stroke, handheld engines used in chain saws, leaf blowers and weed trimmers. The result, according to Chemical Engineering Progress, was a catalytic converter for these tools that destroyed more than 60 percent of hydrocarbon emissions, had more power and fuel efficiency, and were 80 percent quieter. Like most inventors, Mr. Mooney focused on the future and the impact of his work. “I can’t give it up,” he told the Record. “It’s not the money. I don’t need the money. It’s that there’s too many challenges to walk away from. I think about what’s coming next, and I think, ‘Let me be part of that.’ ” |
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30th Jun 2020 6:56am |
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