This Cabinet-level Council is the principal means within the executive branch to coordinate science and technology policy across the diverse entities that make up the federal research and development enterprise. Chaired by the President, the NSTC is made up of the Vice President, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Cabinet Secretaries and Agency Heads with significant science and technology responsibilities, and other White House officials. For more information visit www.ostp.gov/nstc. OSTP's responsibilities include advising the President in policy formulation and budget development on all questions in which science and technology are important elements and articulating the President's science and technology policies and programs. For more information visit www.ostp.gov. In much the same way that silicon in the 1970s led to the modern information technology industry, the development of advanced materials will fuel many of the emerging industries that will address challenges in energy, national security, healthcare, and other areas. Yet the time it takes to move a newly discovered advanced material from the laboratory to the commercial market place remains far too long. Accelerating this process could significantly improve U.S. global competitiveness and ensure that the Nation remains at the forefront of the advanced materials marketplace. This Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness aims to reduce development time by providing the infrastructure and training that American innovators need to discover, develop, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials in a more expeditious and economical way. Prepared by an ad hoc group of the National Science and Technology Council, this initiative proposes a new national infrastructure for data sharing and analysis that will provide a greatly enhanced knowledgebase to scientists and engineers designing new materials. This effort will foster enhanced computational capabilities, data management, and an integrated engineering approach for materials deployment to better leverage and complement existing Federal investments. The success of this initiative will require a sustained effort from the private sector, universities, and the Federal Government. I look forward to working with you to make this vision a reality. A genome is a set of information encoded in the language of DNA that serves as a blueprint for an organism's growth and development. The word genome, when applied in non-biological contexts, connotes a fundamental building block toward a larger purpose. The Materials Genome Initiative is a new, multi-stakeholder effort to develop an infrastructure to accelerate advanced materials discovery and deployment in the United States. Over the …

Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness

Experimental and kinetic study of NO oxidation on model Pt catalysts

Review of thermal management of catalytic converters to decrease engine emissions during cold start and warm up

Reducing cold-start emission from internal combustion engines by means of thermal energy storage system

A Matter of Life(time) and Death

Light-off criterion and transient analysis of catalytic monoliths

One of the critical needs of a Three Way Catalyst (TWC) model is to be able to predict light-off. This is crucial for application studies and vehicle architectural studies because most of the emissions from a TWC occur before light-off (called cold-start emissions). Laboratory experiments give detailed insights to the reaction mechanism and analytical forms of the rate expressions as they are well-controlled and well-behaved as compared to vehicle tests. However, to predict emissions on a vehicle test, the laboratory-estimated kinetic parameters are not entirely capable because of the various uncertainties in the vehicle tests. In this work, six different vehicle data sets are used to calibrate and validate the TWC global kinetic model. Our emphasis in this work is restricted to predicting the light-off (cold-start emissions) in TWC. The kinetic model is calibrated using 4 vehicle data sets (which use the FTP drive cycle) using iSIGHT software package. The kinetic parameters of the various reactions occur...

Kinetic Parameters Estimation for Three Way Catalyst Modeling

Optimal design of catalytic converters for minimizing cold-start emissions

A transient one-dimensional two-phase model is used to obtain an explicit light-off criterion and to estimate the transient time and cumulative cold-start emissions from a catalytic monolith for the case of nonuniform catalyst loading. The light-off criterion can predict the nature of ignition (front-end, middle or back-end). For a fixed amount of metal loading, redistribution of the catalyst appropriately (with more catalyst near the inlet) favors front-end ignition in the monolith and reduces the cumulative cold-start emissions substantially. It is also found that there exists an optimal washcoat thickness and/or metal loading, above which the performance of the converter does not improve significantly while below this optimum, the transient time and cumulative emissions can be reduced by increasing the washcoat thickness or metal loading. For the case of front-end ignition, it is also found that the total transient time is the sum of ignition and the front-propagation times. We present analytical expressions for both these times and show how they may be used to estimate cumulative cold-start emissions. Numerical simulations validate the analytical design criteria presented. Finally, some strategies for minimizing cumulative cold-start emissions are discussed.

A heterogeneous one-dimensional model is used to simulate a three way catalytic converter (TWC). The mathematical model consists of mass and energy balance equations in the gas and solid phases and...

Karthik Ramanathan

Papers

Light-off criterion and transient analysis of catalytic monoliths

Kinetic Parameters Estimation for Three Way Catalyst Modeling

Optimal design of catalytic converters for minimizing cold-start emissions

Optimal design of catalytic converters for minimizing cold-start emissions

Sensitivity Analysis and Kinetic Parameter Estimation in a Three Way Catalytic Converter