Catalysts & Functional Materials
Catalysts are used in almost all chemical industries to allow the essential reactions to occur. Functional materials have the magnetic, electronic, optical or physical properties which are needed in many industries.
Catalysts & Functional Materials
Industry Challenges
Catalyst producers respond to the drivers affecting their customers. This includes the need for more environmentally-friendly processes, and the wish to vary feedstocks to respond to changing market dynamics. This creates a requirement for more flexible catalysts which can adapt to process or feedstock changes, and encourages catalysts producers to shorten the development timelines to respond quickly to their customers’ wishes. Extending the life time of catalysts generally offers operational benefits to most manufacturers. Functional materials are pressed to simultaneously meet the consumer-driven needs of more cost effective materials, while also improving performance in areas such as energy density or thermo-electric properties.
Catalysts & Functional Materials
How We Can Help
ILS helps energy companies to discover how to meet ambitious environmental requirements in a cost effective way. Our parallel reactors reduce the time required to determine the catalyst and process conditions which will meet the changing market needs, and our user friendly software avoids this becoming a headache for laboratory researchers. Running catalyst robustness studies in ILS systems determines how to reduce the downtime for catalyst changeovers. The ILS contract research service helps energy producers with urgent needs access our state of the art research tools.
Case Studies
University of Berlin
Client's Perspective
It wasn’t possible to find existing equipment which could screen catalysts up to 800 degrees Celsius, or use a natural light source as a photoreactor. ILS took an open mind to solve these technical challenges using their deep experience from the many custom designs they’ve completed. They didn’t need to rely on existing standards so the unit was exactly tailored to the chemistry. The open dialogue we have helps me to completely trust them. The unit perfectly meets our needs, and has generated high quality data which we’ve successfully published.
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Schomäcker, University of Berlin
ILS Solution
ILS designed a unique dual-purpose unit for the group of Prof. Schomäcker at the TU-Berlin. The unit provides high-throughput catalyst testing capability as well as kinetic testing capability for the high-temperature oxidative coupling of methane at up to 1000°C. ILS split the unit into two halves with one, 6-parallel small-scale high-throughput testing section for testing ca 100-300mg of powdered catalyst on one side. All reactors have the same gas composition and feed flowrates with individual temperatures. The 2nd side has two, larger-scale reactors for kinetic testing on 1-3g catalyst samples. As kinetic testing requires much more parameter variation, the kinetic testing reactors can operated at different flowrates and compositions and have 3-zone ovens to provide excellent isothermicity. Each side has its own online GC and is fully automated.
Get a Free Consultation
During which we:
- Explore how we can help you with your research
- Share ways to increase your throughput
- Discuss use of online analytics