Durability Study of 3D-Printed Catalytic Static Mixers for Hydrogenations in Chemical Manufacturing

Abstract

Structured catalysts made by additive manufacturing offer the capability to seamlessly scale heterogeneous catalysis from lab to production with minimal effort to reengineer the process at intermediate steps. They can be tailored to meet certain process demands for mixing, heat transfer and flow resistance, in order to overcome flow maldistribution, hotspot or pressure drop issues, generally associated with traditional packed bed systems. Herein we investigate the long-term durability of 3D-printed Pd catalytic static mixers for their use in the hydrogenation of 4-nitrobenzoic acid.