(150c) Formulating a Porous, Solid Catalyst Development Program Using Dimensional Analysis

Developing a new or modifying an existing porous, solid catalyst is time consuming and labor intensive. In other words, it is an expensive process. Companies that develop such catalysts do not publish their experimental programs because their end product is proprietary. Academics who develop such catalysts may publish their experimental programs, but their end product is vaguely related to an industrial purpose. In fact, the end product of most academic catalyst development programs is a publishable paper. Thus, there is little public information available to help an industrial research organization formulate and plan a porous, solid catalyst development program.

            This presentation discusses the application of Dimensional Analysis to porous, solid catalyst evaluations. In general, such an evaluation involves ten variable, two of which form a ratio identified as the dependent variable, thereby leaving eight independent variables. A Dimensional Analysis of porous, solid catalysts reduces the number of variables from eight to five, thereby reducing the number of required experiments from 390625 to 3125; i.e., from un-doable to achievable in three years with a four person staff. The number of required experiments can be further reduced by using statistical design of experiments.

A porous, solid catalyst development program involves grouping the dimensionless coefficient into parametric plots including two dimensionless variables. The number of such combinations is

 n!/r!(n-r)! = 10 

Thus, there are ten possible ways to display the results of a porous, solid catalyst development program. The three plots chosen depends upon the organization doing the choosing.