Additive manufacturing of polymer-Ni electrodes for strontium capture: an innovative trend in Chemical Engineerign

F. CORNACCHIULO; A.AVALOS; M.D.L.A. CANGIANO; M.R.ESQUIVEL

Trends in Chemical Engineering

Research Trends

Lugar: Kerala - India; Año: 2022 vol. 20 p. 51 - 59

0972-4478

Additivemanufacturing can be defined as a collection of interchangeable unitaryprocesses that can be combined to obtain a complex product: a composite. Thiscomposite may consist of different materials such as polymer, ceramics, metalor even biological constituents. The main advantage of the additivemanufacturing is that the unitary operations can be adapted to a specific andselected reaction process. In this work, electrodes of Nickel and 3-D printed polylacticacid (PLA) are produced by additive manufacturing that involves 3-D printing,assembling, compression and temperature treatment to form a stable composite. Thecomposites and electrodes are characterized by differential scanningcalorimetry (DSC), high temperature X-Ray Diffraction (HT-XRD), scanningelectron microscopy (SEM) and associated techniques such as energy dispersivespectroscopy (EDS). The electrodes obtained are used to capture Sr 2+from aqueous solutions. The capture leads to the reduction of the Sr ion tometal on the Nickel surface as observed by SEM and EDS. The compositional changeson the electrode surfaces and morphologies are associated to each electrodereaction. The PLA stability in the reaction temperature range was studied byHT-XRD and DSC. This study is relevant because Ni is casted in PLA molds. Theelectroreduction is an oxidation-reduction process. It means that there arereactions in both electrodes. These reactions are studied from the morphologychanges obtained by SEM and the elemental analysis done by EDS. From theseanalyses, the global electro-reduction reaction is proposed. The results arediscussed in order to develop a mobile device oriented to the capture of Sr 2+in low concentration aqueous volumes