Cost and Environmental Impact Assessment of Stainless Steel Microreactor Plates using Binder Jetting and Metal Injection Molding Processes

Modular chemical process intensification provides a platform for down-scaling chemical process equipment and reducing the number of chemical process steps through increased surface area-to-volume ratios and increased heat and mass transfer rates. In turn, these improvements reduce capital investment and operating costs, facility size, feedstock consumption, and emissions from chemical processing. However, conventional microreactor fabrication has employed inefficient material removal and bonding processes to create devices formed of layers of metal shim stock. This research investigates the relative costs and environmental impacts of metal additive manufacturing and powder metallurgy processes for making microreactor components for a range of market sizes. Binder jetting additive technology and metal injection molding were studied for producing two plates for a microscale chemical reactor used in dimethyl ether production. The manufacturing process design method was applied to quantify the cost of goods sold, and life cycle assessment was applied to model environmental impacts. The manufacturing process design analysis showed that metal injection molding would have better cost performance than binder jetting for a greenfield facility due to lower capital tooling cost and shorter cycle time in making the green part. However, the life cycle assessment indicated, at lower annual production volumes, metal injection molding would have higher cumulative energy demand, global warming potential, and other impacts due to the mold plates and solvent use. While this work reports on model development and a single use case, it motivates a focus on validating analysis results for a range of part sizes and geometries, as well as alternative production routes. This future work would provide design and manufacturing decision makers with richer information regarding process capabilities, production costs, and product environmental impacts for a range of product complexities.