MORE | Summer 2020

Novel Solid Fuel Fabrication using Direct Ink Writing based Additive Manufacturing

Coal is one of the largest sources of energy consumption in the world. However, current manufacturing methods have become increasingly difficult in meeting the requirements of fuel material fabrication in terms of energy efficiency and environmental protection. Additive manufacturing demonstrates advantages in building three-dimensional (3D) objects from scratch. The proposed research is to establish a low cost and supportless mass production process of coal briquettes with complex geometric shapes. In this project, direct ink writing based multidirectional 3D printing process was designed and built, and the motion control was developed for the fabrication of 3D coal briquettes.