Engineering development stage

In the engineering development stage, a practical and workable design is developed. Prototype samples are produced on equipment located at the Technical Center that duplicates the production process to be used. A portion of the materials evaluation work is also performed at this time. Candidate materials are given performance tests and moldability is analyzed in detail. Cost and reliability factors are also considered at this time. 

There are two major areas where fuel processor developers are focusing their research and development efforts, catalyst development and process/engineering development. A smaller, long term effort on novel processing schemes is in the early stages of being investigated. 

The outcome of the development stages are the final production drawings which are released to the manufacturing plant for production. An interim step is the ordering of tooling as soon as the production drawings are available to tool engineering. Once the tools and equipment are available to production, a tool and material tryout is conducted and any problems that may exist are corrected. 

Recently, in academic circles and in industry, a renewed interest can be observed in the development of non-noble metal catalysts, e.g., Cu-based catalysts. If lean-burning systems were to become available, oxidation would be the only reaction to be catalyzed and catalyst composition will certainly be changed accordingly. Catalytic converters are still in the development stage for diesel engines. 

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