3-D Printing for CO2 Capture and Chemical Engineering Design

3-D printing is a form of "additive manufacturing" that allows the fabrication of items directly from digital files. It allows the user to produce virtually any solid object "on demand" and on site, instead of creating it elsewhere. As 3-D printing grows, it has begun to find a number of applications in research laboratories. We have recognized that 3-D printing can have many roles in the design of chemical engineering processes as a means of fabricating parts or perhaps entire unit operations.

Specifically, we foresee many opportunities for 3-D printing as a means of producing novel and advanced components and entire devices for gas treating. Gas treating (i.e. the removal of one or more contaminants from a gaseous mixture) plays a crucial role in many existing and emerging energy-related processes including natural gas sweetening, flue gas desulfurization and pre- and post-combustion CO2 capture. These processes are typically carried out in absorption columns containing trays or packing that provide interfaces for gas-liquid contacting. These trays and packing are traditionally created using conventional manufacturing techniques (i.e. casting and molding).  New devices such as membrane contactors are also emerging as alternative mechanisms for achieving separation of gases with potential cost and energy saving benefits derived from having smaller footprints, being of lighter weight and having much larger interfacial areas.

Because all of these devices are produced using conventional manufacturing techniques, the design, cost and ability to optimize gas-liquid contactors may be limited. In this respect, 3-D printing could be a mechanism by which to achieve improvements on existing technologies and more rapidly deploy novel devices.  We have begun to design, print, and test new packing materials to be used for CO2 separations in a gas-liquid contactor column.  In this presentation we will describe the design and performance of our new packing materials as well as future design plans.  We will also present the short- and long-term benefits resultant from our use of 3-D printing in CO2 separations.