Continuous Wire 3D Printed Sorbent Structures

Traditional carbon dioxide removal systems use desiccant beads packed into cylinders with heater cartridges to initiate regeneration. The desiccant beads result in high-pressure drops and poor air distribution within the sorbent bed, while the heater cartridges nonuniformly heat the bed due to their placement and poor thermal bead-to-bead conductivity. To combat these shortcomings, Mainstream Engineering has developed a method to additively manufacture sorbent beds with embedded heating elements. Specifically, separate pastes of silica gel and zeolite 13X have been formulated that can be additively manufactured while embedding high-resistance heater wires into advanced geometries. In this work, we present our sorbent paste development, our methodology and mechanism of embedding the heating elements into these pastes, and preliminary results therein of both the sorbent and heating performance.