Design and manufacture of a gas test bench for catalysts

What was the challenge or problem to solve?

The Forensic Engineering team had to develop a new gas test bench to characterize the performance of gas degradation.

This setup was used to study catalytic filters as a preventive technology for the degradation of volatile organic compounds and unhealthy substances.

Design and manufacture of a gas test bench for catalysts

How was it addressed or what was the solution?

In order to know the effectiveness of the catalytic filters, it was necessary to build a laboratory setup that allowed controlling several variables and conditions (temperature, concentration of gases, flows …), and tests could be carried out in a controlled and reproducible way.

A key point of the setup was the generation of volatile organic compounds in certain concentrations. For this, an Owlstone OVG-4 brand volatiles generator was available, making the appropriate calibrations and optimizations.

Finally, the results were monitored by a highly sensitive multi-gas team and evaluated by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.

Challenge

Evaluation of the gas degradation efficiency of different catalytic filters
Design a versatile setup through which to modify different parameters in a controlled and reproducible way
Elimination of volatile organic compounds and unhealthy substances

Solution

Construction of a laboratory setup
Generation of volatile organic compounds in determined concentrations
Monitoring of volatile organic compounds with a multi-gas equipment
Evaluation of compounds by gas chromatography