Automated catalyst coating

Fig. 4.34 Semi-automated continuous coating apparatus for catalyst and precursor preparation. The procedure is demonstrated here using an unstructured metal foil unwound from a roll. The wash-coat slurry is fed through a slot die onto the metal foil. After coating, the foil is sent through a drying compartment and wound up.

Coating on micro structures is still dominated by manual coating techniques. For future automated production of catalysts and even complete reactors, automated coating procedures will become crucial. Some new approaches in coating technology especially suited for micro structures are described in Section 4.12.4, Online Reactor Manufacturing. 

If one is confronted with expensive manual work with low complexity, a typical industrial approach would be to automate such a standard manual procedure. This will not only reduce costs of staff but will also increase the reproducibility of the coating procedure, which is an extremely important fact in catalyst development. 

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