Equipment and Facilities - Combinational Catalyst Lab
One of four High-Pressure (HIP) reactor blocks containing the 8x12 vial plate— for processing catalysts in the Heated Orbital Shaker System at up to 200°C and 100 atm pressure.
The Combinatorial Catalyst Lab (Combicat) is a state-of-the-art integrated system for high-throughput catalyst experimentation that includes material preparation and primary screening tests of heterogeneous catalysts (combinatorial catalysis). A complete "flow" parallel processing catalyst evaluation system, Combicat is operable at temperatures and pressures near processing conditions. Designed and built by the leaders in the field, Symyx Technologies, Inc., this combination of high-throughput and processing conditions is unmatched at universities or national laboratories.
Cavro–Liquid Handling Robot—for catalyst synthesis, feedstock preparation for testing, and product preparation for analysis.
The processing components include:
- Three robotic systems for heterogeneous catalyst synthesis using 96-well plates (approximately 1 milliliter volume each), one each for
- solids loading,
- solution impregnation and feedstock addition, and
- solution makeup and product recovery for analysis
- Calcining and reduction furnaces and the processing vessels
- A 4 X 96-well high-pressure reactor (HIP), with a hydrogen feeding capability and a vortex agitating system for good liquid-solid mixing and gas dispersion. The HIP design allows operating conditions at up to 1500 psig @ 200° C.
Heated Orbital Shaker System (HOSS)—for processing four HIP reactors and testing up to 384 catalysts per operation.
The system incorporates an integrated chemical analytical capability with a high-pressure liquid chromatography system (including an autosampler system with a short-column, high-throughput analytical program) to allow 96 samples to be analyzed in less than 12 hours with two detectors, refractive index and ultra-violet. The process control and data processing capability can incorporate either detector into the flow, as needed.