AMAZING

Additive Manufacturing for Zero-Emission Innovative Green Chemistry

Publieke samenvatting / Public summary

Aanleiding
Satisfying the ever-increasing global demand for energy and material goods while achieving the ambitious CO2 emissions targets of the EU for 2030 on climate change requires the utilization of renewable resources (e.g. wind, solar) in the fuels and chemical industries. The Amazing project directly addresses this by replacing large-scale high-temperature cracking processes (e.g. steam cracking) with electrically driven thermo-catalytic activation of alkanes to produce chemical building blocks allowing significant reduction in the CO2 emissions associated with energy-intensive cracking reactions.

Doelstelling
In summary, the Amazing project will deliver a unique family of self-supported catalytic ceramic membranes and the technical feasibility of using 3D printing technology for the manufacturing of ceramic membranes with well-controlled chemistry and topology. that will allow the development of a membrane-stack reactor for the conversion of alkanes to alkenes using electrical heating. Furthermore, this project will provide the first examples of 3D printed proton conducting membranes for electrically driven hydrogen separation.

Korte omschrijving
To achieve the goals of the Amazing project we will design and fabricate ceramic membranes and catalytic coatings for the dehydrogenation of alkanes to alkenes. The resulting membranes will be employed to perform transport and thermal stability studies to understand the interplay between the membrane topology structure and chemical composition with the (1) transport mechanisms and the (2) thermo-mechanical stability. The most promising membranes and catalyst coatings will be selected for an exploratory study on 3D manufacturing of the self-supported membranes. By leveraging computation modeling of the 3D-printing process and the thermo-mechanical properties of the ceramic membrane it will be possible to identify possible mechanisms of failure during fabrication and operation, respectively. The feedback from this analysis will be critical to optimize the design and composition of the membranes. The performance of the membranes will be evaluated for the conversion of light alkanes to olefins on a bimetallic catalyst supported on the ceramic membrane to create a ceramic membrane reactor.

Resultaat
Finally, we will explore the fabrication of a new type of membrane that is capable of conducting only protons. These membranes will be tested for the separation of hydrogen. The results from these activities will lay down the foundations for the utilization of catalytic membrane reactors, proton membranes and 3D printing technology to create multi-material micro-/macro- structured membrane systems for the production of chemicals using renewable electricity.