A data warehouse system for use in a high-throughput/combinatorial materials science environment is introduced. Developed in a research project for lead-free piezo materials, it links the research activities of several partners from academia and industry, spread over a wide geographical area. The system goes beyond the pure accumulation of data in databases and the individual data extraction. It provides numerous tools necessary for knowledge discovery and data exploration, accessed over a common easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI), providing centrally developed best practice statistical analysis pathways and allowing the single partners to discuss the results with colleagues at other locations.

A completely parallelized workflow for the solvothermal synthesis of potential isomerization catalysts has been developed. With design of experiment methodologies, the influence of the process parameters such as water content, detergent type and concentration, synthesis temperature and shaking of the reaction mixture has been studied. The catalyst porosity was tested in high throughput by monitoring the heat of adsorption of probe molecules with emissivity corrected infrared thermography (EC-IRT). The potential of the optimized materials was tested in a conventional plug-flow reactor with the isomerization of 4-Methyl-1-pentene as test reaction. In this study, two new isomerization catalysts have been identified, which are highly porous and outperform the reference zeolites Mordenite and Na-Y at the conditions studied. 