John J. Mooney, an inventor of the catalytic converter, dies at 90

John J. Mooney, an inventor of the catalytic converter, the small and ubiquitous device that makes the engines that power everything from cars to lawn mowers less polluting and more fuel efficient, died June 16 at his home in Wyckoff, New Jersey. He was 90.

The cause was complications of a stroke, his daughter Elizabeth Mooney Convery said.

Mooney was a high school graduate working as a clerk at a gas company when his colleagues encouraged him to pursue a college education. After earning a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees, he went on to receive 17 patents during his 43-year career with the Englehard Corp. in Iselin, New Jersey (now the Catalyst Division of the German chemical manufacturer BASF).

Among them was the three-way catalytic converter, which has been described by the Society of Automotive Engineers as among the 10 most important innovations in the history of the automobile.

The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that tailpipe emissions from the newest passenger cars, SUVs, trucks and buses generate about 99% less smog-producing exhaust and soot than those from the 1970 models did.

Development of catalytic converters was spurred by federal regulations that mandated the production of gasoline without lead, which greatly impaired the effectiveness of existing anti-pollution devices. While early converters were able to reduce emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, the 1970 Clean Air Act imposed limits on another pollutant, nitrogen oxides.

Mooney and Carl D. Keith, a chemist, collaborating with their Englehard colleagues Antonio Eleazar and Phillip Messina, successfully experimented on a 1973 Volvo station wagon to create a catalytic converter that reduced all three kinds of emission.

Simply put, the device filtered the exhaust through tiny passages in a ceramic honeycomb coated with a combination of various oxides, platinum and rhodium. It was introduced on assembly lines in 1976.

Installing a computerized feedback link to the converter resulted in fuel savings upward of 12%. Similar technology was later applied to an array of devices, including mining equipment, motorcycles and wood stoves.

Mooney’s most recent patent, in 1993, was awarded for a converter that reduced emissions from chain saws and leaf blowers by up to 40% while improving fuel efficiency.

Joel Bloom, president of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said in a recent statement that Mooney, a 1960 graduate, was “a brilliant engineer, a trailblazing inventor and an esteemed mentor to many.”