Additive Manufacturing in Fluid Process Engineering

Abstract

Additive manufacturing describes technologies that translate virtual computer‐aided design data into physical models in a fast process. While industries such as automotive and aerospace adopt this manufacturing technique rapidly, it is little applied within process engineering. Additive manufacturing offers freedom of design which gives access to novel shapes and geometries with fast production times. This review analyses the most important layer fabrication principles first and shows applications of additive manufacturing in fluid process engineering second. The review focuses on applications where liquids and gases are involved and it showcases the potential of additive manufacturing within process engineering of functional devices. Examples of current research projects show the potential of the technology for advances process engineering.

3D Printed Microfluidic Mixers—A Comparative Study on Mixing Unit Performances

“…With the development of high‐definition 3D printing in the past years, this technique is emerging as a promising alternative to traditional manufacturing methods . 3D printing is usually highly automated and requires a minimal amount of manual labor after printing, to eliminate support structures . Compared to soft lithography, 3D printing is much faster, lowering the manufacturing time from days to hours for single prototypes and even allows for the fabrication of multiple devices at the same time.…”

Additive Manufacturing: Unlocking the Evolution of Energy Materials

“…Other AM technologies that involve polymer structure fabrication, such as SLA and inkjet printing, use the advantage of liquid photosensitive resin, as the feedstock . The resins used in SLA are mainly polyacrylate or epoxy based, but there are also other resins that can be used in SLA methods, including phenolic resin, etc.…”

“…Other advantages of AM include reduced lead‐time and it presents itself as a more sustainable manufacturing technology, resulting from less waste material. Purposely this review article will not focus on the detailed information about various AM technologies, since these processes were comprehensively covered in recently published reviews . Instead we will limit this section to a summary of AM processes and will briefly describe how they can collectively aid in resolving energy challenges.…”

Laserless Additive Manufacturing of Membrane Electrode Assemblies

“…Commonly available AM techniques for creating porous and conductive electrodes are powder‐based methods such as selective laser melting and sintering (SLM and SLS) as well as robocasting …”

“…SLS and SLM methods can be used for printing a variety of materials, such as plastics, glasses, ceramics and metals. In the case of metal printing, the so called direct metal laser sintering process, high precision parts can be produced such as titanium hip implants . However, the implementation of multi‐material is challenging with powder‐based methods.…”