Catalyst Performance Study Using Taguchi Methods

A study was conducted to determine the effects of various factors on the performance characteristics of aged monolithic catalytic converters. The factors that were evaluated were catalyst volume, converter configuration (number of elements), catalyst supplier, “washcoat technology”, rhodium loading, platinum loading, and palladium loading. This study was also designed to evaluate the interactions among the various factors. To improve the efficiency of the study a 2-level fractional factorial experiment was designed using the Taguchi method. That made it possible to study the effects of the seven main factors and six interactions by evaluating only 16 different samples. The study helped sort the factors that had significant effects and helped quantify their effect on catalyst performance. This paper details the methodology used to design the experiment and analyze the results.