Additive manufacturing of microstructured reactors for organometallic catalytic reactions

Area of Science:

• Chemical Engineering
• Materials Science
• Additive Manufacturing

Background:

• Standard chemical reactors often present limitations in efficiency and performance.
• Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers potential for novel reactor designs with enhanced properties.
• Flow chemistry benefits from advanced reactor architectures for improved process outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To fabricate and compare two distinct AM-derived chemical reactors: a Honeycomb monolith and a Periodic Open Cell Structure (POCS).
• To evaluate the catalytic performance of these reactors after surface activation with palladium.
• To assess the impact of novel reactor design on heterogeneous catalytic reactions, specifically the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction.

Main Methods:

• Two reactors, Honeycomb and POCS, were fabricated using Stereolithography with high-temperature resin.
• Internal surfaces were chemically activated via a two-step grafting procedure using NaOH and Na2PdCl4.
• Reactor performance was characterized using the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction, a common pharmaceutical process.

Main Results:

• The POCS reactor, a novel design, exhibited improved characteristics like increased surface area and porosity.
• Palladium grafting was successfully achieved on the internal surfaces of both reactor types.
• Experimental results indicated superior performance of the POCS reactor over the Honeycomb reactor at equal contact surface area.

Conclusions:

• Stereolithography enables the fabrication of complex reactor geometries for flow chemistry.
• The POCS reactor design offers significant advantages over standard Honeycomb reactors for catalytic applications.
• AM-fabricated reactors with tailored surface properties hold promise for advancing chemical synthesis and pharmaceutical manufacturing.