Reactor Engineering

Modern chemical synthesis increasingly depends on the reactor. Mixing, light delivery, temperature control, pressure release, gas evolution, residence time and the contact between liquid and solid or gas phases can determine whether a reaction is efficient, reproducible and safe. Conventional glassware remains indispensable, but it does not easily provide complex internal geometries, integrated safety elements, miniaturized functional layouts or rapid customization for a specific chemical task.

The reactor-engineering program in AnanikovLab develops a different approach. The reactor is treated as a designed scientific instrument rather than as a passive vessel. Computer-aided design, fused filament fabrication, metallization, materials testing, thermographic analysis, neural-network tools and chemical validation are combined to create functional reactors directly in the research laboratory.

Let us design the reactor around the chemistry, not adapt the chemistry to available glassware!

Project objectives

• Develop customizable laboratory reactors that can be designed, manufactured and modified rapidly for particular chemical processes.
• Improve the reliability of 3D-printed reactors by selecting chemically resistant materials and controlling printing defects.
• Create reactor platforms for flow chemistry, photochemistry, gas-liquid transformations and compact on-demand gas generation.
• Increase safety in reactions involving gaseous reagents and pressure accumulation through integrated safety modules.
• Connect reactor design with real synthetic performance, including biologically relevant molecules, acetylene chemistry, hydrogenation, photochemical transformations and multistep reaction sequences.

Digital manufacturing of customizable flow reactors

Flow chemistry is one of the most powerful directions in modern laboratory and process chemistry. However, customized flow reactors are not always accessible to synthetic laboratories because conventional fabrication can require expensive equipment, specialized personnel and long production cycles. Additive manufacturing makes the geometry flexible, but directly printed plastic reactors often suffer from porosity, limited solvent resistance and insufficient thermal or mechanical stability.

We addressed this limitation through the 3D+G approach. A reactor core is first produced by fused deposition modeling using a conventional plastic material and is then transformed by chemical and galvanic metallization. The process combines the design freedom and low cost of plastic 3D printing with improved surface protection, heat transfer and chemical resistance provided by a metal coating.

Figure 2. Operating sequence of 3D printing followed by chemical modification and metal plating in the 3D+G process. Source: DOI 10.1016/j.cej.2021.132670.

The resulting flow reactors can be assembled as modular devices and equipped with interchangeable reactor plates. This enables rapid testing of different internal channel geometries, including spiral, meander, zig-zag, split-and-recombine and cascade structures. The same reactor platform can therefore be adapted to homogeneous reactions, heterogeneous processes and photochemical transformations.

Photoreactor engineering

Photochemical and photocatalytic reactions are exceptionally sensitive to reactor design. The reaction outcome may depend not only on the catalyst and substrate but also on wavelength, light intensity, optical geometry, heat dissipation and temperature stabilization. In poorly controlled systems, heating can mask or even eliminate the true photochemical effect.

We developed customized photoreactors that combine adaptable LED sources, temperature stabilization and geometries suitable for both parallel experimentation and scale-up synthesis. Metallic 3D-printed photoreactors provide precise geometry and robust heat transfer, while polymer-based devices make larger and more accessible reactor designs possible.

The photoreactor work illustrates a central principle of reactor engineering: reliable chemistry requires reliable physical conditions. For light-driven chemistry, this means that the reactor must control both irradiation and temperature. The reactor becomes part of the experimental definition of the reaction.

Miniaturized chemical equipment: acetylene on demand

Reactor engineering is not limited to reaction vessels. It also changes the spatial organization of laboratory operations. A striking example is the 3D-printed acetylene generation cartridge. Acetylene is an important C2 building block, but the use of gaseous acetylene in regular laboratories is limited by safety and equipment requirements. Calcium carbide provides a convenient on-demand source of acetylene, yet conventional laboratory setups occupy significant space and require time for preparation.

The cartridge developed is a compact, ready-to-use device produced by additive manufacturing. It is preloaded with calcium carbide, sealed during printing and contains internal channels for gas generation, water trapping and drying. This design converts a bulky laboratory gas-generation setup into a small monolithic object suitable for storage and rapid use.

Spatial packing is the key engineering idea in this work. The internal volume is not simply a container; it is organized into functional zones for the reagent, gas path, water trap and drying compartment. This makes the device a miniature chemical plant for on-demand acetylene delivery.

Materials for chemical reactors

The freedom of 3D printing is useful only when the printed material is compatible with chemical operation. A reactor material must tolerate organic solvents, elevated temperature, mechanical stress and, in some cases, pressure. The properties of a printed part cannot be predicted simply from the bulk polymer: layer adhesion, porosity, anisotropy, infill, printing temperature and extrusion conditions strongly influence reactor performance.

A systematic study of fused filament fabrication materials showed that carbon-filled polyamide-6 offers a particularly strong balance of chemical resistance, thermal stability and mechanical performance for laboratory reactor applications. This material was validated in chemical reactors for catalytic hydrogenation in both batch and flow modes.

Safe liquid/gas-phase organic synthesis

Many valuable organic transformations use gaseous reagents or generate gases during the reaction. Hydrogen, carbon dioxide, acetylene and other gases expand the chemical space of organic synthesis, but mixed liquid/gas-phase systems are operationally demanding. Conventional glassware is chemically familiar but not designed for pressure accumulation; metal autoclaves are robust but expensive, less transparent, less customizable and often excessive for small-scale exploratory chemistry.

The laboratory safety concept developed uses 3D-printed reactors and safety modules with integrated bursting discs. The aim is not to replace high-pressure industrial equipment, but to create safer, customizable tools for laboratory-scale transformations where gas evolution and moderate pressure may occur. Under excessive internal pressure, printed parts can delaminate or crack without forming the hazardous glass fragments associated with broken glassware.

The same study introduced reactor designs for single-chamber and double-chamber liquid/gas-phase chemistry. Safety elements can be placed at selected locations of the reactor and manufactured from different thermoplastics. This approach gives the synthetic chemist a flexible platform for reactions involving in situ gas generation, gas transfer and pressure relief.

Defects and quality control

Reactor reliability depends on the control of defects. In material extrusion 3D printing, defects can appear at many scales, from macroscopic warping and layer shifting to pores, voids, cracks, weak interlayer adhesion and molecular-level changes in the polymer. For ordinary prototypes these imperfections may be tolerable, but for chemical reactors they can cause leakage, solvent penetration, pressure loss, contamination or mechanical failure.

A systematic classification of defects is therefore part of reactor engineering. Understanding how defects form and how they affect a printed part provides a scientific basis for choosing materials, tuning printing parameters, introducing quality-control protocols and deciding whether a part is suitable for chemical use.

Thermal imaging and neural networks for reliability prediction

The future of reactor engineering is predictive. Printed parts can be monitored during mechanical testing by thermal imaging, because deformation and fracture are accompanied by localized thermal signatures. When these data are analyzed using neural-network methods, they can be used to extract structure-strength relationships and predict fracture events.

This approach is directly relevant to safe reactor design. It connects additive manufacturing, nondestructive testing, contactless observation and artificial intelligence. In practical terms, it opens a path toward remote supervision of printed components and more data-rich quality assurance for functional laboratory equipment.

From reactor hardware to new chemistry

The reactor-engineering direction in our Lab connects practical hardware development with fundamental and applied chemical research. It enables reactions that require controlled irradiation, modular flow paths, safe gas handling, miniaturized reagent generation, custom internal architecture and rapid design iteration. The same methodology also contributes to a broader transformation of laboratory practice: digital models become chemical tools, and the synthetic laboratory becomes a place where new reactors can be invented as quickly as new reactions.

The impact of this work is both practical and conceptual. Practically, it gives chemists access to low-cost, customizable, compact and safer equipment. Conceptually, it shows that reactor design is an active component of chemical discovery.

Publications: reactor engineering and additive manufacturing

2025

Korabelnikova V. A.; Gyrdymova Y. V.; Gordeev E. G.; Potorochenko A. N.; Rodygin K. S.; Ananikov V. P.
3D printing for safe organic synthesis in mixed liquid/gas-phase chemistry.
Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, 2025, 10, 2474-2489.
DOI: 10.1039/d4re00249k

2023

Erokhin K. S.; Naumov S. A.; Ananikov V. P.
Analysis, classification and remediation of defects in material extrusion 3D printing.
Russian Chemical Reviews, 2023, 92, RCR5103.
DOI: 10.59761/RCR5103

Erokhin K. S.; Ananikov V. P.
Densely Packed Chemical Synthesis Equipment by 3D Spatial Design and Additive Manufacturing: Acetylene Generation Cartridge.
Organic Process Research & Development, 2023, 27, 1144-1153.
DOI: 10.1021/acs.oprd.3c00112

Korabelnikova V. A.; Gordeev E. G.; Ananikov V. P.
Systematic study of FFF materials for digitalizing chemical reactors with 3D printing: superior performance of carbon-filled polyamide.
Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, 2023, 8, 1613-1628.
DOI: 10.1039/d2re00395c

2022

Boiko D. A.; Korabelnikova V. A.; Gordeev E. G.; Ananikov V. P.
Integration of thermal imaging and neural networks for mechanical strength analysis and fracture prediction in 3D-printed plastic parts.
Scientific Reports, 2022, 12, 8944.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-12503-y

Gordeev E. G.; Erokhin K. S.; Kobelev A. D.; Burykina J. V.; Novikov P. V.; Ananikov V. P.
Exploring metallic and plastic 3D printed photochemical reactors for customizing chemical synthesis.
Scientific Reports, 2022, 12, 3780.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-07583-9

Kucherov F. A.; Romashov L. V.; Ananikov V. P.
Development of 3D+G printing for the design of customizable flow reactors.
Chemical Engineering Journal, 2022, 430, 132670.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2021.132670

2020

Gordeev E. G.; Ananikov V. P.
Widely accessible 3D printing technologies in chemistry, biochemistry and pharmaceutics: applications, materials and prospects.
Russian Chemical Reviews, 2020, 89, 1507-1561.
DOI: 10.1070/RCR4980