Buy­ing the Right Cat­a­lyst for Your Indus­tri­al Application

Here at Wat­son Inter­na­tion­al, we sup­ply indus­tri­al cat­a­lysts to busi­ness­es in accor­dance with their indi­vid­ual cat­a­lyst needs. We have homoge­nous cat­a­lysts, spe­cial­ty cat­a­lysts and metal­lic com­pounds. Quite often, dur­ing our ini­tial con­tacts with cus­tomers, we find that busi­ness­es are not always clear about which cat­a­lyst they would like to request a pro­pos­al for. Some are con­fused between dif­fer­ent options. This is espe­cial­ly the case with pro­pos­als per­tain­ing to an indus­tri­al research project. Cat­a­lysts can pro­vide you with com­pet­i­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing advan­tages, but the prob­lem is if you don’t choose the right cat­a­lyst for your par­tic­u­lar indus­tri­al appli­ca­tion, your deci­sion can back­fire as well. Plants some­times have to be shut down because of an error in the cat­a­lyst. In the con­text of every­thing dis­cussed above, we there­fore decid­ed to write this blog post. The aim is to edu­cate our read­ers about how to make sure they are buy­ing the right cat­a­lyst for their indus­tri­al appli­ca­tion. It’s worth men­tion­ing that wealth of infor­ma­tion goes in the design of a cat­a­lyst sys­tem and as such we would only be cov­er­ing the basic infor­ma­tion. With­out any fur­ther ado, let’s get started. 

Know every­thing about your indus­tri­al process there is to be known

It might sound obvi­ous, but this is where the infor­ma­tion is found most lack­ing when a request for a cat­a­lyst is made. The dif­fer­ent sub stages of your indus­tri­al process, the thresh­old val­ues of each sub stage, the per­cent con­ver­sion required, the exhaust flow rate, the sul­fur con­tent in your fuel, the pres­sure drop con­straints – you need to know every­thing. The infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing process might seem tedious and it will cer­tain­ly be iter­a­tive, but the knowl­edge is crit­i­cal to make the right cat­a­lyst choice for your busi­ness.

Com­mu­ni­cate the infor­ma­tion with the cat­a­lyst supplier

Once you have the infor­ma­tion, doc­u­ment in detail. Dou­ble check where num­bers are involved to make sure there are no mis­takes. Send this detailed doc­u­ment to the cat­a­lyst sup­pli­er at the time when you are send­ing a request for the pro­pos­al. If you are unable to pro­vide all the infor­ma­tion, don’t wor­ry — the sup­pli­er should be able to estab­lish some approx­i­ma­tions based on the data that you have pro­vid­ed them with. Your aim should be to pro­vide them with as much accu­rate infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble. This data would then be used by the sup­pli­er as input para­me­ters in the siz­ing, met­al load­ing, cost­ing and wash coat for­mu­la­tion of the cat­a­lyst design. The sup­pli­er will fur­ther use the data to devel­op a mod­el of what the cat­a­lyst sys­tem would entail, and as such any ensu­ing con­cep­tu­al­iza­tions such as lim­it­ing fac­tors, would also be incor­po­rat­ed in the cat­a­lyst selec­tion and design process.

Ask the sup­pli­er for the test results

The infor­ma­tion that you com­mu­ni­cate about your process, in some cas­es, the sup­pli­er would use it to cre­ate a sim­u­lat­ed envi­ron­ment and test the designed cat­a­lyst to see if it’s pro­duc­ing ade­quate results. How­ev­er, not every sup­pli­er will pro­vide you the test­ing ser­vices. It’s not finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble for them. If the sup­pli­er has con­duct­ed a test pre­vi­ous­ly in sim­i­lar con­di­tions for anoth­er cus­tomer, they may pro­vide you with those results instead. Either way, it’s fine as long as the sup­pli­er can fur­nish you some sort of val­i­da­tion proof that the cat­a­lyst is com­pli­ant with your set objec­tives. On that note, we come to the end of our dis­cus­sion. Remem­ber, when it comes to buy­ing a cat­a­lyst, the age-old adage couldn’t be truer : An ounce of mea­sure is worth a pound of cure Fol­low these guide­lines and you won’t go wrong in your deci­sion. A BONUS read : Catal­y­sis – What You Need to Know About It