TECHNOLOGY developed to destroy waste products from a space laser may soon protect people from carbon monoxide poisoning in their homes. Two companies have started developing commercial products using a catalyst developed at NASA鈥檚 Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The catalyst is platinised tin oxide. It causes carbon monoxide to combine with oxygen in the air to form carbon dioxide. If inhaled, carbon monoxide can stop the blood鈥檚 haemoglobin absorbing oxygen. Carbon dioxide does not interfere with haemoglobin, so it is much safer.
One of the companies developing the technology is Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation in Rochester, New York. Christine D鈥橝mbrosio, director of research and development, says the company is particularly interested in the new catalyst because it works at room temperature. Many other catalysts -those used in self-cleaning ovens, for example 鈥� function only when heat is applied. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 great about the catalyst is that it鈥檚 totally passive,鈥� says D鈥橝mbrosio. Customers will not need to remember to activate the catalyst for it to be effective.
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Carbon monoxide can be produced in dangerous quantities by faulty boilers or gas fires, and cases of carbon monoxide poisoning have increased as people have sealed their homes more tightly to save energy. After several people died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Chicago last winter, the city authorities passed a law requiring carbon monoxide detectors in homes, and sales of the detectors soared nationwide. The NASA catalyst could be added to the filters that purify hot air from boilers. According to D鈥橝mbrosio, it could even be coated onto wallpaper.
Another company, Mantic Corporation of Salt Lake City, Utah, plans to use the catalyst in breathing masks that would protect firefighters from carbon monoxide in fires.
鈥淚 think it would be brilliant for firefighters, where exposure to carbon monoxide is unavoidable,鈥� says Stephanie Trotter, president of the British-based Carbon Monoxide and Gas Safety Society, CO-GAS. 鈥淏ut for domestic situations, I would rather people used a carbon monoxide detector and got their appliances properly serviced.鈥�
NASA originally developed the catalyst for use with a laser powered by carbon dioxide. The laser will orbit for five years aboard the Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder, a scientific satellite that is expected to be launched sometime in the next decade. The laser will produce carbon monoxide waste, which the catalyst will recycle back into carbon dioxide.
Encouraged by the success of platinised tin oxide, NASA and Rochester Gas and Electric jointly developed a variation of the catalyst that destroys formaldehyde. D鈥橝mbrosio says other versions may eliminate hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.
