Abstract

Structured Catalysts for Hydrogenations in Chemical Manufacture and for the Storage of Renewable Hydrogen

Christian Hornung, Director of FloWorks, CSIRO

Over the past 10 years, our group has developed and commercialized a new structured catalyst system, termed Catalytic Static Mixers or CSMs. This technology is based on additively manufactured metal scaffolds which are coated with a noble metal catalyst such as Pt, Pd, Ni, Ru or others. The CSMs are then used inside conventional tubular reactors for continuous flow hydrogenations in chemical manufacturing and for the chemical storage of renewable hydrogen. With the help of computational fluid dynamics and AI-assisted algorithms, the structure of the mixer lattice can be optimized for a range of different outputs, such as minimized pressure drop, maximized heat transfer or enhanced mixing. CSMs are classified as a hierarchical catalyst system, whereby different length scales are addressed by different preparation methods; cm-, mm- and µm-scale features are formed by the powder bed, metal 3D printing process and by classical engineering design of the reactor, while certain µm- and nm-scale features are created during the catalyst preparation and deposition procedures. This results in a highly efficient and versatile catalyst platform which can be used in a broad range of different applications.