The effects of hot isostatic pressing (HIP) on castings produced in a variety of platinum alloys was investigated. A number of benefits were observed, including a reduction in porosity and improvements to the microstructure and mechanical properties. Differences in the response to HIP of individual alloys is evaluated as well as some inherent limitations of the HIP process.

Introduction The 10th International Symposium on Continuous Flow Reactor Technology for Industrial Applications was held at the Ramada Plaza Milano Hotel Conference Centre, Milan, Italy from Tuesday 13th November to Thursday 15th November 2018. The event had 160 delegate attendees, mostly from equipment suppliers including: AM Technology, UK; Chemtrix, The Netherlands; Corning, USA;...

Squalene (SQE) was fully converted into squalane (SQA) in a continuous reactor. The design of a three-dimensional (3D) printed support allowed selectivity to be tuned towards squalane. The advantages of being able to design the geometry of the catalytic support using 3D printing technology are presented in this paper.

The productivity and efficiency of continuous manufacturing have long been exploited for benefit in bulk chemical production applications. For decades chemical manufacturers have put continuous manufacturing processes to good use, producing millions of metric tonnes annually utilising a relatively small manufacturing footprint. Often tens of per cent of the global production of large...

With a design guided by computational fluid dynamics (CFD), additively manufactured from base metals and coated with metal catalysts using cold spray technology or electroplating, catalytic static mixers are used to replace fixed bed columns in continuous flow reactors. We have shown their versatility in gas-liquid hydrogenations and homogeneous transfer hydrogenations and review here their preparation, stability and wider use in catalytic transformations using flow reactors. Additive manufacturing provides complex mixer structures that can be retrofitted to existing reactor geometry and reduces manufacturing costs by removing abrasive blasting steps in the mixer fabrication process. The rough surface profile of the mixers aids with high metallurgical bonding of the catalyst coating, as shown by the low catalyst leaching levels reported here.

Solvent extraction is a key separation process in several industries. Mixer-settlers and agitated or pulsed columns are mainly used as liquid-liquid contactors. However, these units require large solvent inventories and long residence times, while flow fields are often not uniform and mixing is poor. These drawbacks can be overcome with process intensification approaches where small channel extractors are used instead. The reduced volumes of small units in association with the increased efficiencies facilitate the use of novel, often expensive, but more efficient and environmentally friendly solvents, such as ionic liquids. The small throughputs of intensified contactors, however, can limit their full usage in industrial applications, thus robust scale-up strategies need to be developed. This paper reviews promising intensified technologies for liquid-liquid extractions based on small channels. In particular, extractions in single channels and in confined impinging jets are considered. The increase in throughput via scale-out approaches with appropriate manifolds is discussed, based on the use of many channels in parallel. The combination of small channels and centrifugal forces is exploited in counter-current chromatography (CCC) systems where many mixing and settling steps are combined within the contactors. Scale up is possible via centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) configurations.

Understanding the manufacture and operation of automotive emissions control particulate filters is important in the optimised design of these emissions control systems. Here we show how magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to understand the drying process, which is part of the manufacture of catalysed particulate filters. Comparison between a wall-flow particulate filter substrate and a flow-through monolith (FTM) has been performed, with MRI giving spatial information on the drying process. We have also used MRI to study the fluid dynamics of a gasoline particulate filter (GPF). Inlet and outlet channel gas velocities have been measured for a clean GPF and two GPF samples loaded with particulate matter (PM) to understand the effect of PM on the filter flow profiles and porous wall permeability as soot is deposited.

The recent increase in the number of policies to protect the environment has led to a rise in the worldwide demand for activated carbon, which is the most extensively utilised adsorbent in numerous industries and has a high probability to be used in the energy and agriculture sectors as electrodes in supercapacitors and for fertiliser production. This paper is about the production of activated biochar from oak woodchips char generated by an updraft fixed bed gasifier reactor. Following this, using steam as activating agent and thermal energy from produced synthesis gas (syngas), the resulting highly microporous carbonaceous biomaterial was subjected to physical activation at 750ºC. The properties of activated biochar include adsorption or desorption of nitrogen to identify the physical adsorption and surface area measurement, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The biochar surface area, generated as a result of the gasification process, showed substantial improvement after steam activation. Also, significant discrepancies were obtained from the surface volume and areas of biochar byproducts from the gasifier and activated biochar obtained by steam activation after the gasification treatment (total pore volume 0.022 cm³ g⁻¹ and 0.231 cm³ g⁻¹, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area 21.35 m² g⁻¹ and 458.28 m² g⁻¹, respectively). The two samples also yielded noteworthy differences in performance. As a consequence, it may be concluded that the kinetics of steam gasification is quicker and more efficient for the conversion of biochar to activated carbon. The pore sizes of the carbon produced by steam activation were distributed over a wide spectrum of values, and both micro- and mesoporous structures were developed.