Background and Motivation
Metallic catalyst substrates provide high thermal conductivities, large surface areas and low-pressure drops. However, conventional manufacturing of them via welding/brazing methods is time-and-money consuming. Therefore, their applications have been limited. On the other side, within the last decade, additive manufac-turing (AM) technologies have undergone considerable developments towards supporting industrial produc-tions. Freedom-of-design is a key feature of AM, which allows production of catalytic substrates in various shapes. By taking control over AM process parameters, metal-substrates can be structured in a way to opti-mise operating characteristics (pressure drop, heat transfer) of a chemical reaction.
Following this motivation; within this master thesis, you deal with the characterization of AM metal substrates, catalytic coating and testing of catalytic activities under technical conditions.

Tasks/ Planned Works

After literature review on the concept of Catalytic Converters, the following steps are planned:

IMVT:
- Additive manufacturing of the prototypes via SLM 3D-Printing
- Catalytic coating
- Microscopy measurements

ITCP:
- Preparation of the slurries for catalytic coating
- Testing the catalytic activities

Conditions and Requirements
This is a collaborative work between IMVT and ITCP institutes, and meets the following requirements:
- Studies in chemical/process engineering, chemistry or similar
- Practical skills and interest in laboratory works
- Presentation of the results in an institute seminar
- Thesis can be written in English or German

Start: as soon as possible
Reviewers: Prof. Dittmeyer (IMVT) & Prof. Grunwaldt (ITCP)
Supervisors: Sima Mehdipour (IMVT) and Tim Delrieux (ITCP)
Contact: s.mehdipour@kit.edu