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The creators of a filter to clean up soot emissions from diesel cars are one of four UK innovators up for Britain's biggest engineering prize.
The four finalists for the 2008 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award have been announced.
The nominated projects are: a long-awaited catalytic converter set to clean up diesel car emissions; Polar, a robotic retrieval system for the UK Biobank that operates in -80°C conditions, a dime-sized sensor on a chip that can detect a whiff of explosives or a hint of disease and the world's first commercially available bionic hand.
Speciality chemicals company Johnson Matthey are the inventors of the compact catalysed soot filter for diesel cars. The company was the 2000 MacRobert Award winner for its Continuously Regenerating Trap, which is now the leading technology for controlling soot emissions from trucks and buses.
The latest nominated invention is a soot filter for diesel cars, which are taking over Europe's car market and have now overtaken petrol cars on Europe's production line.
The company says it has already exported over 1.5 million of the filters for use in European cars ahead of new emissions control legislation which comes into force from 2009, which alone will stop millions kilograms of soot entering the atmosphere over the life of these vehicles.
The winners will be presented prize money of STG 50,000 (US$97,000) and the solid gold MacRobert award medal by the Duke of Edinburgh at the Academy Awards Dinner in London on June 9.
(c) NewsRoom 2008
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