In 1981 the U.S. government put forth the following plan for automobile manufacturers to r...

In 1981 the U.S. government put forth the following plan for automobile manufacturers to reduce emissions from automobiles over the next few years.

All values are in grams per mile. An automobile emitting 3.74 lb of CO and 0.37 lb of NO on a journey of 1000 miles would meet the current government requirements.

To remove oxides of nitrogen (assumed to be NO) from automobile exhaust, a scheme has been proposed that uses unburned carbon monoxide (CO) in the exhaust to reduce the NO over a solid catalyst, according to the reaction

Experimental data for a particular solid catalyst indicate that the reaction rate can be well represented over a large range of temperatures by

where  PN = gas-phase partial pressure of NO

Pc = gas-phase partial pressure of CO

k, K1, K2 = coefficients depending only on temperature

(a) Based on your experience with other such systems, you are asked to propose an adsorption-surface reaction-desorption mechanism that will explain the experimentally observed kinetics.

(b) A certain engineer thinks that it would be desirable to operate with a very large stoichiometric excess of CO to minimize catalytic reactor volume. Do you agree or disagree? Explain.

(c) When this reaction is carried out over a supported Rh catalyst [J. Phys. Chem., 92, 389 (1988)], the reaction mechanism is believed to be

When the ratio of PCO/PNO is small, the rate Jaw that is consistent with the experimental data is

What are the conditions for which the rate law and mechanism are consistent?