Death Routed From the Garage

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 974, 17 May 1930, Page 18

Death Routed From the Garage

Perils of Carbon-Mon-oxide Overcome By Eminent Chemist . . . An Invention that Will Have Far-Reaching Consequences . . .

- EADLY monoxide gas — bane of motorists and regarded by many eminM ,-x-. Jsj ent scientists as a rising menace to public I y Ijy health in cities- —has been conquered. This is a most notable scientific contribution to the health and welfare of our mechauisecl civilisation.

Working in his laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Dr. J C W Frazer, eminent chemist, has succeeded recently in oxidising car-bon-monoxide gas as it comes from the exhaust of an automobile engine. Under his cleft fingers the poison gas becomes harmless carbon dioxide, a chemical sister to the death dealing monoxide. Dr. Frazer has solved a problem that has baffled science for many years and one that of late has had its importance multiplied a thousandfold by the increased use of the automobile. Dr. Frazer’s discovery has more than a commercial value. It has a humanitarian one that will increase with the years. For carbon monoxide is one of 'the deadliest of gases, only a fraction of 1 per cent, being necessary to make for a dangerous condition. What this means in the case of the car owner can be effectively

visualised when it is stated that an average gasoline-engine exhaust may j contain as high as 14 per cent, carbonmonoxide gas. Carbon monoxide is a peculiar poison; in fact, it is not a poison at all, despite its menace to life. It destroys life by robbing the blood of oxygen. In its endless marathon to reach the blood first oxygen is hopelessly beaten by carbon monoxide. According to scientific researches, a small car running in a single-car garage can provide an atmosphere fatal to man in something like five minutes. The degree of concentration of the monoxide is, of course, conditioned by the ventilation of the garage, but obviously no one should venture to warm up an automobile with the garage doors closed. The great danger from this source lies in the fact that the insidious carbon monoxide prostrates its victims without warning. “Carbon monoxide is caused,” says Dr. Frazer, “by the incomplete combustion of carbon or anything containing carbon. In the case of the automobile engine, perfect combustion is a thing hardly to be expected. There is no way of getting lid of the carbon monoxide other than through the exhaust pipe of the engine. Hence our problem becomes one of meeting the enemy at its back door, so to speak.”* And this is just what Dr. Frazer has done. He has taken the carbon-monoxide gas as it comes from the engine and applied to it a chemical substance—the character of which he has not yet made public—converting the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, a harmless gas. familiar to the public as an ingredient of soda-fountain dryrks. The process by which Dr. Frazer i

converts carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide is called in chemistry catalysis, which means a chemical reaction produced by an agent wnich itself does not change.

Before announcing his discovery to the world, Dr. Frazer put it through a series of rigid tests. He worked on the theory that he had nothing until it proved itself not only once or twice hi the laboratory, but every day for weeks in the laboratory and every day for weeks upon the road. As a consequence, therefore, he set up in his laboratory an automobile eugine with a device containing his catalytic agent attached to the exhaust. Today Dr. Frazer speaks modestly of his achievement. He even goes so far as to suggest that he is still somewhat this side of success. Now it remains for his discovery to be applied commercially to the automobile, for his present device is large and somewhat cumbersome. To be of service commercially, it will have to be fashioned after the manner of an ordinary automobile muffler. This, doing away with smoke and offensive burnt-gasoline odours from an automobile engine means, virtually, the dawning of a new day of motor travel. With Dr. Frazer’s discovery scientifically applied to all automobiles, it will mean the end of the sickening smell which hangs over highways throughout the warm weather. 11l winter the closed car will lose much of its stuffiness, which in many cases is caused by exhaust gases seepiug up through the car floor. Bus travel will be much more enjoyable, and many persons who now experience a seasick feeling from the noxious gases which get into the interior of the vehicle will be able to enjoy their ride thoroughly. The present discovery of Dr. Frazer is not his first excursion into the field of poison-gas counteraction. During the war he worked in his Baltimore laboratory perfecting a counteractive agent against carbon monoxide for use in preserving the lives of soldiers and sailors. Today the counter-active agent evolved by him

at that time is being marketed com. mercially. It is used chiefly in minerescue work. Today one man's guess is os good as another's regarding the value of Dr. Frazer's discovery to posterity. But that it will be of value is not to be doubted. That much can be arrived at by projecting modern civilisation down the road 25 or 50 years. What

does it reveal? The imagination staggers at the thought of the millions of automobiles of the future. And the sky? Overhead, thousands of planes roaring.

Dr. Frazer's discovery is substantial proof of the age-old saying that everything has its compensation. No sooner does anything rise up to threaten the life of man on the earth than something is discovered which wards it off or casts around man a protective barrier. Man dodges and twists his way through myriads and myriads of tortuous channels to life, health, and happiness. For 25 years Dr. Frazer has been labouring at Johns Hopkins University, adding to the chemical knowledge of the world. He has been working for more than two years in perfecting this latest method of converting carbon monoxide into the harmless dioxide While Dr. Frazer and other chemists have been searching the woods of science for a solution of the carbon monoxide problem, via the chemical contact route, automotive engineers have been dreaming of perfecting aa automobile engine that would not throw off large quantities of this gas. The process used by Dr. Frazer in oxidising carbon monoxide —the catalvtic method —is not a new one. Sulphuric acid has been made by this method for years, the two gases out of which it is made being induced to unite by passing them over a catalysing material. Science is waiting for Dr. Frazer to get his patents through, so that it may know something of the chemical lie has developed for the conversion of carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide.