3 ms·

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 s

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.

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.