watson.fawkes - 20-8-2008 at 20:00
So on a whim today, I contacted some Chinese manufacturers of ready-to-use V<sub>2</sub>O<sub>5</sub> catalyst. Their product
is a a ceramic substrate with the oxide already deposited onto it. It's ready to put into your reactor and go. The substrate pieces look like
they've been extruded.
The upshot is that they quoted me an quick-and-high estimate of USD 7000 per metric ton, with a minimum order of one ton. If there were enough
small-timers scrubbing their own coking operations (for example), I'd consider buying a ton and splitting it. But I won't. The reason I'm posting
this is to provide an economic data point. After markup, it seems that USD 150 for a 10 kg package would make a decent eBay product
No, I'm not going to say who I talked to. It's easy enough to use Google yourself if you care to find out the handful of such manufacturers.
[Grumble, hitting "post" instead of "preview".]
[Edited on 20-8-2008 by watson.fawkes]
The_Davster - 20-8-2008 at 20:53
There is always the:
"Hmm is there a price break in the multi-tonnes? Really? Great! Do you have any experience with it in (application)? No? Well how about a couple kg
sample for pilot scale test"
Fleaker - 21-8-2008 at 19:41
It is hardly a difficult catalyst to make up! V2O5 from the ceramics supply house will work just fine although Dav's suggestion is appealing as well
watson.fawkes - 22-8-2008 at 06:58
I wasn't claiming that you couldn't do it yourself; not at all. There's always a build-vs.-buy issue to examine. It depends on what you're
interested in doing with your time as well as your own time-vs.-money indifference curve. I was curious about the 'buy' side of catalyst acquisition.
That said, I found myself interested in the shape of the ceramic substrates they use. They're optimizing a particular point in the gas flow vs.
intimacy of contact trade-off. Their choice seems to be to use shapes that encourage micro-turbulence, so that they get good contact and pay for it
with flow dissipation rather than flow constriction (as an impregnated wool catalyst has). I doubt this has much effect on a ultralight-scale reactor,
since the incremental cost of extra flow rate is so tiny.
watson.fawkes - 23-8-2008 at 10:05
Speaking of these commercial catalysts, the following picture set is from one such manufacturer:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyhantao
There are picture of all the catalysts, and what appear to be something of the manufacturing processes.