This $600,000 National Science Foundation award through the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) funds research at the University of Minnesota from January 2023 through December 2025. The project will develop an understanding of plasma-catalyzed reactions in confined spaces to enable near ambient temperature NOx reduction for automotive cold start emissions. Researchers will examine reaction and transport phenomena impacting the coupling of plasma and catalytic chemistry within capillary microreactors mimicking catalytic converter monoliths. Work will include probing diffusion timescales of reactive intermediates, developing spectroscopic tools to identify short-lived species, and multiscale modeling of underlying processes. The goal is to elucidate how transport impacts plasma-catalytic coupling and describe new pathways for NOx reduction to address more than 80% of vehicular pollution occurring during engine warm up.
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