CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 86, 2021 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.cetjournal.it Guest Editors: Sauro Pierucci, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš Copyright © 2021, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. I SBN 978-88-95608-84-6; I SSN 2283-9216 Automotive Internal Combustion Gas Reduction using CuZSM-5 in a Catalytic Converter Josselyn A. Aquino Montoro a , Jhonny W. Valverde Flores a,b , Carlos A. Castañeda Olivera a,* a Escuela Profesional de Ingeniería Ambiental, Universidad César Vallejo, Av. Alfredo Mendiola 6232, Los olivos, Lima, Perú b Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, Lima, Peru caralcaso@gmail.com Toxic gases emitted by internal automotive combustion are responsible for air pollution and deterioration of human health. Therefore, in this study modified zeolite was evaluated as an alternative catalyst for reducing automotive gases in a catalytic converter. For the study, the CuZSM-5 zeolite was synthesized by the hydrothermal method, exchanged with copper ions and then installed in the exhaust of a T3 Bi-Fuel engine. The experiments were carried out on an auto model 1984 Toyota, with and without a catalytic converter at different revolutions per minute (rpm) as idle, average and maximum, using the HGA 400 4GR gas analyser to measure hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO). The results showed a significant reduction in LPG engine of Hydrocarbon Propane (78 %) and CO (60 %) at high rpm; while in gasoline engine was reduced at Hexane (29 %) and carbon monoxide (68 %) at low rpm. This showed that Cu-zeolite is efficient in reducing gases and more economical than the commercial converter. 1. Introduction The expansion of cities, the industrial sector and natural factors, each year release millions of tons of air pollutants (Pourvakhshoori, 2020). Of these, the automobile fleet is the main source of emission of toxic gases such as carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC) and nitrogen oxide (NO X ) (Bello, 2020). Multiple studies have shown that humanity is exposed to poor air quality on a daily basis (Sánchez, 2012), inducing respiratory and heart diseases (Valverde, 2016) and irreversible changes in the ecosystem such as loss of biodiversity (Na, 2020). Starting in the 19th century, catalysis was used as an alternative to mitigate and control fixed atmospheric emissions (Zanella, 2014). Its application for mobile sources was developed with the need to eliminate diesel engine gases through the SCR (Selective catalytic reduction) system with the injection of a reducing agent called urea (Wang, 2015) at 32% in water, functioning as an oxidant and combustion gas reducer (Decolatti, 2012). Currently, converters are composed of precious metals such as Platinum, Rhodium and Palladium, which behave as gas catalysts (Sen, 2016). On the other hand, these metals are highly expensive and present rapid deactivation, which has encouraged the use of zeolite, a mineral of the three-dimensional crystalline aluminosilicate type, with retention capacity, high selectivity and well-defined structures (Kianfar, 2020; Moliner and Corma, 2019). The natural zeolite proved to be efficient in the conversion of CO for gasoline engines (Rajakrishnamoorthy et al., 2019), in reducing NOx for diesel engines (Cho et al., 2017) and enhancement of tyre-derived oil quality (Namchot and Jitkarnka, 2015). Likewise, the ionic exchange of zeolite with metals improves its catalytic capacities and does not alter its morphology (Chen et al., 2018), which indicates that the metal species act as primary active sites (Lee et al., 2019), deducing that this catalyst is more active at low temperatures, because they present less CuO load (Pereda, 2014). As thermal support, ceramic monoliths are used, which are usually composed of cordierite in the form of honeycombs or foams, obtained by the extrusion and corrugation process (Govender and Friedrich, 2017). These are the most used in catalyst coating, due to their superior hydrothermal stability, low coefficient of thermal expansion and low cost (Wang, 2015). DOI: 10.3303/CET2186076 Paper Received: 23 September 2020; Revised: 14 March 2021; Accepted: 5 May 2021 Please cite this article as: Aquino Montoro J., Valverde Flores J.W., Castaneda Olivera C., 2021, Automotive Internal Combustion Gas Reduction Using CuZSM-5 in a Catalytic Converter, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 86, 451-456 DOI:10.3303/CET2186076 451