CatCost: A Free Tool for Rapidly and Accurately Estimating Catalyst Manufacturing Costs (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video CatCost: A Free Tool for Rapidly and Accurately Estimating Catalyst Manufacturing Costs.

CatCost is a free online tool that quickly and accurately estimates pre-commercial catalyst manufacturing costs by incorporating innovative decision-logic with industry-standard methods into a user-friendly platform. CatCost improves research efficiency and reduces commercialization risk by identifying cost drivers in catalyst production, enabling better R&D decisions to accelerate technology adoption into the marketplace.

Video opens with a shot of male researcher in a white lab coat, crossing the screen carrying a brown jug. A female researcher, also wearing a white lab coat, then walks towards the camera carrying small items in her hands.

>>Josh Shaidle: So, why should anybody care about a catalyst and the cost of a catalyst?

[Video shows montage of people working, agriculture processes, and crops]

>>Josh Shaidle: Well, across the world about 85% of the chemical products that we touch and…

[Video cuts to woman in a grocery store selecting cleaning products from a shelf.]

>>Josh Shaidle: …engage with on a daily basis go through a catalytic process to generate those…

[Video cuts to a female researcher in a white lab coat working at her bench.]

>>Josh Shaidle: …materials. Further, the catalyst industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry and

[Video cuts to close-up of a male researcher inspecting a jar with brown fluid in it.]

>>Josh Shaidle: …it's growing because of the need to incorporate new resources and new…

[Video cuts to female researcher looking at her computer screen, which displays code; a finger points to something on screen.]

>>Josh Shaidle: …feedstocks into our economy today. And so, this tool enables you to accelerate the…

[Josh Schaidle, Director of the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …rate at which new catalysts and new materials are developed to convert these…

[Video cuts to female researcher works at a glove box.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …emerging feedstocks into fuels, products, and chemicals.

[Video cuts to close-up of the same female researcher injecting a yellow liquid into a small, glass tube.]

>>Fred Baddour: CatCost is a free and… 

[Fred Baddour, CatCost Principal Investigator and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Fred Baddour: …publicly available tool for estimating the cost of pre-commercial catalysts. We developed CatCost to enable… 

[Video cuts to man wearing hard hat and checking gauges in a bioenergy lab.]

>>Fred Baddour: …catalyst researchers to understand economics…

[Video cuts to two men wearing hard hats referring to a control panel in a bioenergy lab.]

>>Fred Baddour: …around scaling up a process. So, the costs associated with manufacturing any material are very very different dependent on scale and so, when you're…

[Fred Baddour, CatCost Principal Investigator and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Fred Baddour: …transitioning materials from the laboratory to commercial scales there's a large unknown and uncertainty associated with the cost of preparing them. 

[Josh Schaidle, Director of the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Josh Schaidle: As a researcher myself, one of the things that gets me most excited about this tool…

[Video cuts to a male and female researcher, seated, referring to data displayed on several computer monitors mounted in front of them.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …is the insight gained by bringing together known and established…

[Video cuts to close-up of data displayed on several computer monitors.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …methodologies for estimating cost and…

[Video cuts to over-the-shoulder shot of a female researcher looking at data displayed on several computer monitors.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …the innovative decision-making logic that we've built into the tool, streamlining that information together…

[Josh Schaidle, Director of the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …and giving that insight to people broadly across the community to help us accelerate our R&D.

[Video cuts to screenshot of someone navigating the CatCost tool.]

>>Fred Baddour: One of the major differentiators of CatCost is that it enables a rapid and accurate assessment of the economics of the material. 

[Fred Baddour, CatCost Principal Investigator and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Fred Baddour: There are a number of different ways that researchers are able to assess the economics around their process and their synthesis…

[Video cuts to female researcher carrying two bottles of brown liquid over to her male counterpart. The two examine the bottles.]

>>Fred Baddour: …however, these often take weeks or months to perform with full teams of economic advisors. What CatCost does is… 

[Video cuts to screenshot of data within the CatCost tool.]

>>Fred Baddour: …delivers a lot of the same accuracy on a drastically reduced time scale.

[Kurt Van Allsburg, CatCost Lead Developer and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: The intellectual property requirements of the catalyst industry pose some unique challenges and opportunities that we wanted to address with the CatCost tool.

[Video cuts to screenshot of the CatCost tool.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: For example, we designed the tool so that no user information is ever…

[Video cuts to tracking shot through the servers of a supercomputer.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: …transmitted to our servers. Even if you're using the web tool, everything is…

[Video cuts to close up of a man’s hands typing on a computer keyboard, a bar graph is sitting on the table next to the keyboard.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: …stored locally in your browser.

[Video cuts to two female researchers standing, looking at a computer screen together.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: And we also designed it so that users can input…

[Video cuts to close-up of data entered into the CatCost tool.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: …their own company in-house data for a more accurate estimate to their own…

[Kurt Van Allsburg, CatCost Lead Developer and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: …situation. In other words, catalyst researchers are able to get the customization that they're interested in without compromising any of the security of their data.

[Fred Baddour, CatCost Principal Investigator and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Fred Baddour: One of the primary benefits of CatCost is that we can…

[Video cuts to male researcher, wearing a white lab coat, entering data into a computer screen; bottles and plastic tubing are in the foreground.]

>>Fred Baddour: …envision this working very seamlessly in the current workflow of a catalyst…

[Video cuts to close-up of three bottles containing an off-white liquid, connected to a number of valves and plastic tubes.]

>>Fred Baddour: …researcher because of the ease-of-use and the accuracy of this type of tool…

[Video cuts to close-up of a researcher’s hand entering data into a computer screen.]

>>Fred Baddour: …and the type of estimates that are delivered by CatCost, catalyst researchers…

[Fred Baddour, CatCost Principal Investigator and NREL researcher, appears on-screen. ]

>>Fred Baddour: …are able to make these estimates, streamline them, and be able to make decisions real-time, based on the cost of their materials.

[Video cuts to close-up of a finger pointed to a laptop monitor, which is displaying the CatCost tool.]

>>Fred Baddour: Ultimately, no tool exists in the public domain that offers the accuracy, flexibility, and ease 

[Josh Schaidle, Director of the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Josh Schaidle: Overall, in industry and academia, in the national lab complex…

[Video cuts to close-up of a researcher’s hand, wearing black latex glove, depositing a rust-colored powder into a glass vessel.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …this tool improves research efficiency, which means we're getting… 

[Video cuts to female researcher, wearing a white lab coat, connecting a plastic tube to a glass vessel.]

>>Josh Schaidle: …greater value from dollars put into catalyst development.

[Video cuts to wide shot of a male researcher, wearing a blue lab coat, checking equipment in a bioenergy lab. 

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: As we look to the future, we hope that CatCost becomes…

[Video cuts to close-up of male researcher's gloved hands checking valves.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: …an integral part of the way that catalyst R&D is done. 

[Kurt Van Allsburg, CatCost Lead Developer and NREL researcher, appears on-screen.]

>>Kurt Van Allsburg: Research is always going to take you to unexpected places and we want to ensure that through CatCost, economic insight is part of the equation.

[Video cuts to the three interviewees working in the lab. Text appears on-screen: Learn more: catcost.chembio.org]

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