As autumn approaches, universities are back in session and summer interns at Nexceris are headed back to campus. Fortunately, for our product development teams the change in season doesn’t affect our opportunities to work with bright young engineers from around the world and right next door.
This fall semester, Nexceris is excited to be working with two undergraduates from The Ohio State University’s Integrated Systems Engineering Department in a Senior Design Project. The project is focused on the assessment of various manufacturing approaches for Nexceris’ advanced catalyst technology.
As part of Nexceris’ product innovation process, Sanchi Arora and Rachel Nash, Seniors in OSU’s ISE department, will work with Nexceris engineers to evaluate different paths to manufacturing catalyst products for chemical process applications. The two will provide cost modeling and manufacturing process analysis for a number of candidate catalyst support structures and mechanical designs to determine which provides the best path to low-cost manufacture.
Beyond the support manufacturing and selection, the pair will work with our manufacturing teams to determine the process flow for these components as they are integrated into catalyst synthesis and packaging operations at Nexceris.
Finally, the project will include consideration of the end-user experience loading, handling, and operating the catalyst products. The group’s findings will be used to refine mechanical design and materials selection by the product development team.
Nexceris’ catalyst team anticipates the early introduction of ISE principles in the product innovation and design phase will help better define the product design space and reduce the eventual cost of commercialization. Already, the Nexceris team has catalyst performance data and advanced simulation results that suggest the technologies can help reduce the size and weight of reactors. By carefully considering manufacturing options and paths at the current stage of design, the outcome of this effort will shorten the path to pilot production and delivery to our customers.
Matthew Seabaugh, Nexceris’ Director of New Product Launch said of the project, “I’m excited that our catalyst team can benefit from working with bright young engineers on manufacturability early in the product development process. I think that we can also provide the ISE design team an unusual and challenging opportunity in this project. Many of our team benefitted from co-op education and senior design projects with industry early in our careers, and it’s fun and rewarding to give some time back.”