Additive manufactured electrodes

Final lecture related to additive  manufacturing in separation and purification   is focusing on electrodes and electrochemistry  which can be enhanced by additive manufacturing.  

Here I also want to thank Heidi Piili for  participating to prepare this lecture and also   participating in one project that we are doing  in related to these electrochemical applications. 

So, additive manufactured electrodes -  we can produce very complex structures.   We need to have a larger surface area so  that we can increase the process efficiency,   but by increasing the size of the pores and  surface roughness this can be accomplished.   There are these steps that we need to   go through if we want to produce electrodes  by SLM technology. So we start with the model   of course, then we they make the .STL file and  then we do slicing and then toolpath before we are   doing the additive manufacturing and  finally we will get this 3D printed object.  Here is one example - here is this electrode  that has been produced by additive manufacturing.   Here is the surface.

You see that the surface is  porous and it has increased surface roughness,   and here it has been produced from stainless  steel and then coated by nickel. And this is   conventional electrocatalytic unit where  you can utilize this kind of electrodes. 

Here is another example - here these electrodes  have been again produced by stainless steel but   then they are coated with gold. These  kind of electrodes are usually used for   detection of different kind of contaminants and  actually sensitivity of this kind of electrode   was three times better compared to  conventional classic carbon electrode.  

Here is the design process for the electrode which  is used in this kind of flow reaction reactors.   There is a lattice cell geometry that we want  to select and check the surface area of these   geometries. Then we have the design here and in  in the structure we have a lattice structure here   which is selected from these structures  or geometries and then we have current   collector. The most important benefit of this  kind of electrode is that the current collector   and lattice structure are solid   and they are not attached by any linkers to  each other. It means that we can reduce the  

resistance and that in this way improve the energy  efficiency and current efficiency of the process. 

Modelling can be done by nTopology software, so  here you can really see how the liquid is flown   through the electrode. This kind of studies  have been done in the Academy Re-Gold project   which is ongoing, so basically you can really  optimize the structure of the electrode.  

And here this lattice structure which is  included in the whole system we can really see   which of the parts of the lattice are  for example heating during the process   and which part are not so much heated,  in which part the current is highest   and etc., so this is very good  option to design novel structures. 

So this was the last part of my lectures. Now  you have seen briefly how additive manufacturing   can be used in different kind of separation and  purification technologies. You might know that,   for example, clean water is one of the most  important things in the future, and if we can   improve the purification of water  by utilizing this novel technology,   we really should do that. Hopefully you have  enjoyed and thank you for participating!