Automated Design of Additively Manufactured Reactors for Decentralized CO$_2$-to-Methanol Production

The transition to decentralized energy systems increases the demand for adaptable and scalable reactors. Power-to-Methanol (PtM) converts renewable electricity, green H$_2$, and captured CO$_2$ into a liquid energy carrier. The reaction is exothermic, so reactor design governs both the achievable methanol production rate and the thermal control of the system. Additive manufacturing (AM) widens the accessible design space, but the development of complex reactor geometries depends on computer-aided design (CAD) expertise that is not common among chemical engineers. To address this limitation, this study presents a design automation tool for the development of customized reactors across varying operational conditions and production scales. The tool integrates automated geometry generation, simulation-based performance evaluation, and AM design constraints within a single workflow. Based on a defined target methanol production rate, it generates manufacturing-ready reactor geometries without manual CAD input. The total design time is approximately 105 min for a lab-scale reactor at 0.125 L/day and 27 h for a container-scale reactor at 50 L/day. ... mehrThe underlying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is validated against lab-scale experiments on additively manufactured reactor configurations at varying inlet flow rates. Simulated and measured outlet flows agree with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 4.11, 3.67 and 34.15 mLs/min for CO, CO$_2$ and H$_2$. This work connects the design stage to the manufactured reactor, supporting the deployment of PtM technologies in decentralized energy systems.