3D-Printed Mixers Demonstrated for CO2 Capturing

CO₂ emission is a major environmental challenge and one of the main contributors to global warming. A significant fraction of it originates from the combustion step as those used in power generation plants. In this process, amine-based absorption is the most technologically matured CO₂ capturing technology to date. Still, this process has some fundamental limitations. To substantially improve energy efficiency and reduce capital and operating expenditures, the capabilities of 3D manufacturing to fabricate non-conventional static mixers are explored to enhance the CO₂ capturing technology. Along the theme of this motivation, a multidisciplinary project was established and executed by six undergraduate chemical and mechanical engineering students. Although a major part of this project is related to education, two experimental facilities have been established, which are essential for conducting high-quality research and meeting the CO₂ capturing design requirements. The first is an air-water setup used to experimentally evaluate the flow hydrodynamic, gas-liquid bubble breakage, and measure the pressure drop. The second facility is a microreactor, which is a powerful laboratory tool for kinetics studies and screening conditions and solvents. This setup is used to understand the CO2 application requirements, and more importantly, to establish an experimental benchmark to evaluate the invented and 3D-printed mixers designs. Multiple 3D-printed mixers are fabricated and evaluated using these two setups. The speed from which a design was created, fabricated and tested, suggests that many design iterations can be lead to validated novel mixer designs with low resource and budget requirements. Progress reached so far will be presented along with learning from using this experimental-driven design approach enabled by 3D manufacturing.

Acknowledgment: This work was made possible by funding from UREP27-097-2-028 (Undergraduate Research Experience Program) from Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF).