Principal Investigator: Hirotaka Sato (Associate Professor, School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE/NTU)
Team: Zhan Jing (Ph.D student, MAE, NTU), Chong Jian Rong (Ph.D student, MAE, NTU) & Wan Wei Yang (Project Officer, MAE, NTU)
Mentor: Lim Song Joo (Founder, BWG Singapore)
Metal coating of non-metallic parts with low catalyst consumption
Our team invented a wet-treatment process that activates the entire surface of the non-conductive substrate, which significantly reduces the cost of palladium usage in the catalyzation process by up to 90%. At the same time, the surface finish of the end product is highly comparable to that of the industrial standard which uses 98% more palladium catalyst. Prior to the start of the 10-weeks LLP programme, our BMC remained in the early phase of hypothesis validation. As we went through the course of programme, interviews with quantitative and qualitative validation of our hypothesis pinpointed us in the direction of clearly identifying the beachhead market for our invention. As our BMC and VPC became more refined, our perception of the market size also became crystal clear in a way of adopting our business model and framework to align closely with industrial standards, while ensuring the source of palladium catalyst remains environmentally viable.