Contribution of Additive Manufacturing to Process Intensification

In less than 20 years, the intensification of material and energy transformation processes has gone from concept to industrial reality. As defined in the "European Roadmap for Process Intensification", process intensification represents a set of often radically different, innovative principles in process and equipment design. The significant benefits are in terms of overall process efficiency, characterized by lower operating and investment costs, reduced rejects and significantly improved process safety.

Since the emergence of the concept in the 1980s, these principles have found a number of applications in the petrochemical and fine chemicals sectors, and particularly in pharmaceutical chemistry. In addition to theoretical concepts that provide a better understanding of the physico-chemical phenomena involved, it is essential to have innovative technological solutions for manufacturing intensified equipment. Thanks to new manufacturing techniques, it is now possible to produce equipment with geometries and associated dimensions that enable a drastic increase in material and heat transfer, while at the same time offering a high degree of compactness for equipment such as reactors, heat exchangers, mixers, separators, etc., which are key equipment in industrial processes.

From a conceptual point of view, all types of high-performance equipment can be imagined and dimensioned. However, practical implementation - particularly the machining and assembly of component parts, depending on the nature of the materials used - may present a number of limitations that make it technically or economically impossible to achieve complex geometries. If it is not possible to manufacture compact equipment with a large heat exchange surface area to remove the heat released by a chemical reaction, it is necessary to adapt the reaction conditions, for example by dilution, to carry out the synthesis in the less efficient reactor. It is easy to see that limitations in the machining and manufacture of equipment can limit its potential for intensification. This is particularly true of intensification by geometrical modification, presented in this article.

Over the past fifteen years, additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, has opened up new opportunities for the design and production of such equipment, by overcoming certain obstacles inherent in traditional manufacturing methods. With the emergence of additive manufacturing solutions offering enhanced manufacturing capabilities and productivity, it is now possible to produce equipment that can be used competitively in industrial processes. Additive manufacturing is emerging as a key technology in many roadmaps.

The aim of this article is to present the advantages and disadvantages of additive...