3 ms·

If its effectiveness is as good as they say, seems like you could just use 1,000,000x less catalyst and end up with something as effective as current technology

If its effectiveness is as good as they say, seems like you could just use 1,000,000x less catalyst and end up with something as effective as current technology. $190 million -> 190 bucks ;) Seriously though, couldn't they just use far less catalyst and not have to deal with the prices you've calculated?

rtpg 5y ago
would it still work though? Like if the mechanism is a relation between surface area and the water, you might not have a choice to just use less material? Unless your "strategy" is to, like.... just have a tiny flow of super pure water and then mixing it into untreated water. (Your strategy might totally work of course, just might not be a given)
honie 5y ago
> Seriously though, couldn't they just use far less catalyst and not have to deal with the prices you've calculated? The flow rate is likely positively correlated with catalyst loading (in the part that we care about) and the calculation is already based on the flow rate of 0.2 ml min¯¹ they reported in the paper. The reported flow rate is also likely already optimised for the Nature Communications paper.
- neltnerb 5y ago
  It is very unlikely that they could have even explored the full parameter space if they wanted to, it's such a huge undertaking. It's probably optimized under some constraints, but there's a huge number of things involved -- support material, surface area, catalyst metal, alloying, promoters, pretreatment, temperature, pressure, flow rate -- my experience has been that you can take any catalyst and make it work a lot better by just picking an understudied parameter and optimizing it. My guess is that you could drop the catalyst noble metal content by 10-100x or even substitute an alternative catalyst and find a combination of conditions and catalyst that works. It's not a sure thing, but it's not unlikely. Sometimes it's as simple as swapping one support for another and the performance goes up 100x, it's just a lot of tests to run that don't even apply to both lab and commercial scales anyway (so a lot of the tests are never practical to run anyway). I think it'd be a bigger deal if it didn't require pressurization to 10 bar personally, pumps are expensive to operate and catalysts are a one-time-cost (if you're lucky).
  - honie 5y ago
    > It is very unlikely that they could have even explored the full parameter space if they wanted to, it's such a huge undertaking... Absolutely agree and no arguments whatsoever. In fact, one of the first things that I joked to myself was that we will soon see papers on MOF-suppoorted version of the catalyst -- well before we see any DoE. In any case, I just want to note that I made the comment in response to the following: > $190 million -> 190 bucks ;) Which appears to be a misunderstanding, as the calculation in question has implicitly taken into account the "millions of times" increase in disinfection efficacy. > I think it'd be a bigger deal if it didn't require pressurization to 10 bar personally, pumps are expensive to operate and catalysts are a one-time-cost (if you're lucky). I felt uncomfortable about the pressure, too, but it was just a hunch. Thank you for putting this into context. :) Edit: clarity, typo.

rtpg 5y ago

would it still work though? Like if the mechanism is a relation between surface area and the water, you might not have a choice to just use less material? Unless your "strategy" is to, like.... just have a tiny flow of super pure water and then mixing it into untreated water. (Your strategy might totally work of course, just might not be a given)

honie 5y ago

> Seriously though, couldn't they just use far less catalyst and not have to deal with the prices you've calculated? The flow rate is likely positively correlated with catalyst loading (in the part that we care about) and the calculation is already based on the flow rate of 0.2 ml min¯¹ they reported in the paper. The reported flow rate is also likely already optimised for the Nature Communications paper.

neltnerb 5y ago
It is very unlikely that they could have even explored the full parameter space if they wanted to, it's such a huge undertaking. It's probably optimized under some constraints, but there's a huge number of things involved -- support material, surface area, catalyst metal, alloying, promoters, pretreatment, temperature, pressure, flow rate -- my experience has been that you can take any catalyst and make it work a lot better by just picking an understudied parameter and optimizing it. My guess is that you could drop the catalyst noble metal content by 10-100x or even substitute an alternative catalyst and find a combination of conditions and catalyst that works. It's not a sure thing, but it's not unlikely. Sometimes it's as simple as swapping one support for another and the performance goes up 100x, it's just a lot of tests to run that don't even apply to both lab and commercial scales anyway (so a lot of the tests are never practical to run anyway). I think it'd be a bigger deal if it didn't require pressurization to 10 bar personally, pumps are expensive to operate and catalysts are a one-time-cost (if you're lucky).
- honie 5y ago
  > It is very unlikely that they could have even explored the full parameter space if they wanted to, it's such a huge undertaking... Absolutely agree and no arguments whatsoever. In fact, one of the first things that I joked to myself was that we will soon see papers on MOF-suppoorted version of the catalyst -- well before we see any DoE. In any case, I just want to note that I made the comment in response to the following: > $190 million -> 190 bucks ;) Which appears to be a misunderstanding, as the calculation in question has implicitly taken into account the "millions of times" increase in disinfection efficacy. > I think it'd be a bigger deal if it didn't require pressurization to 10 bar personally, pumps are expensive to operate and catalysts are a one-time-cost (if you're lucky). I felt uncomfortable about the pressure, too, but it was just a hunch. Thank you for putting this into context. :) Edit: clarity, typo.