06/12/2021
Internal combustion is nasty business. Fuel and air get burned to create pressure for driving the crankshaft to power the drivetrain, but that combustion rips the molecules apart, releasing toxic gasses that quickly find their way into the atmosphere. The nastiest pollutants are carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide. The EPA classifies these as greenhouse gasses and they must be reduced significantly in all gasoline-burning engines. The muffler on your car filters the sound, but it does very little to reduce the toxic components of the exhaust. That task falls on the much-maligned catalytic converter.
