Additive manufacturing for energy: A review

The conflict between rapidly growing global energy demand and climate change is a grand challenge that requires significant science and technology innovations. Advanced manufacturing could extensively drive down greenhouse gas emission and pollution, and shorten the time-to-market. Additive manufacturing is a process of fabricating three-dimensional objects by depositing materials layer-by-layer directly from computational geometry model, and it eliminates the design and fabrication restrictions of conventional manufacturing methods to a large extent. As an emerging and transformative technology, additive manufacturing technologies have shown the potential benefits of energy saving in multiple energy sectors. To further increase their applications in nuclear energy and renewable energies, fundamental research is needed to overcome some key challenges in terms of process monitoring and control, dimension accuracy, and structural integrity of the components. The validation and qualification of additive manufacturing processes and the products from those additive manufacturing processes are imperative to meeting the high standards of critical components in various energy production, conversion and storage systems. In this review article, we summarize the current status of cutting-edge additive manufacturing technologies and their applications in the fields of nuclear energy, battery, fuel cell, oil & gas. We also outline the major challenges and fundamental research needed to achieve the full potential of additive manufacturing technologies. This review provides critical discussion and prospects to address global energy challenges by applying innovative additive manufacturing technologies.