PROJECT TEAM

Domagoj Vrsaljko (Project leader) is currently an assistant professor working at FCET; his research is related to the field of chemical engineering, materials engineering, especially polymeric materials with specific properties, such as composites and polymer blends and surface engineering.
Ivana Grčić is currently a postdoctoral student working at FCET; she is an experienced researcher, main fields of interest: photocatalysis, sonocatalysis, preparation of photo/sono-catalysts, modelling and numerical optimization.
Krunoslav Žižek is currently an assistant professor working at FCET; he is an experienced researcher, main fields of interest: population balance modelling of inherent physical transformations.
Zana Hajdari is a postdoctoral student working at FCET employed on the 3Dmicroreactors project; she is an experienced researcher, main fields of interest: chemical and corrosion engineering, materials, coatings.
Igor Dejanović is currently an assistant professor working at FCET. He will act as a consultant. Foreseen consulting activities are those related to experimental work and to test different scale-up strategies and define the optimal one.
Irena Kereković is currently a postdoctoral student working at FCET. She will act as a consultant. Foreseen consulting activities are those related to experimental work related to the field of sensors in which she is an expert.
Cédric Guyon is currently an assistant professor working at Plasma, Microsystemes -Institut de recherche de Chimie Paris. He will act as a consultant. Foreseen consulting activities are those related to experimental work concerning plasma processing of materials – Plasma deposition –PECVD, and microreactor design.

SUMMARY

3D printing technology is a relatively cheap, automated, and customizable method that will make possible for synthetic laboratories and small companies to access chemical engineering tools typically used only in large-scale industrial settings. 3D printing consists of the fabrication of three-dimensional physical objects from a digital model. The 3D printer takes the virtual design from computer-aided design (CAD) software and reproduces it layer-by-layer until the physical definition of the layers gives the designed object. The significant advantage of this technique is that the architecture can be concisely controlled.

Aim of the 3Dmicroreactors project is research and development of polymeric composite materials for use in 3D printing of intricate milli- and microreactors. The 3Dmicroreactors project team members come from 4 different departments and are specialists in different parts of materials and chemical engineering, guaranteeing multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity of the project.

In the 3Dmicroreactors project we will, by using polymeric composite materials, build microreactors with high precision, including complex geometries and intricate internal structures - such as channels with well-defined size dimensions. Furthermore, integration of sensors and catalysts in the construction material, and understanding material properties and kinetics of the processes will enable the designing of the reactionware, allowing us to combine additional materials and kinetic knowledge with reactor designs. The additive manufacturing process of the devices takes a short time and will result in a cheap procedure for the fabrication of fluidic devices.

3D printing technology will enable chemical engineers to design and fabricate their own inexpensive reaction vessels with the push of a few buttons opposing to paying experts for production of intricate glassware and specialized reactors.

PROJECT AIM:

Research and development of polymeric composite materials for use in 3D printing of intricate milli- and microreactors.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

• To prepare and test new polymeric composite materials for 3D printed microreactors

• To model and test new designs of 3D printed microreactors; integration of sensors and catalysts in the construction material of 3D printed microreactors

• To test the influence of microreactor surface modification on flow dynamics

• To define scale-up strategy