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I am doing laboratory experiments and need to print some components.

I am working with different aqueous (water) solutions containing sulphuric acid (H2SO4), hydrochloric acid (HCl), and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), separately and in combination. The pH of the solutions are in the range 0 to 7. Temperatures don't exceed 40° Celsius.

In another application we have aqueous solutions containing high concentrations of FeCl3, HCl and in some cases H2O2 at temperatures of up to 180° Celsius.

Which 3D printing filament materials can you recommend for these applications?

Trish
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Johan Zietsman
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2 Answers2

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There are two issues you have here, one is temperature stability and the other is chemical reactivity of plastics. I can't help you with the chemistry side, but I can help with the temperature.

Application 1 (Temp < 40 °C)

Any FDM plastic will perform reasonably well under these temperatures. I would suggest trying a Nylon, PETG or a PolyCarbonate filament as I know these are more resistant to acids than PLA or ABS. As far as strength of the parts, all FDM plastics will work well

Application 2 (Temp > 180 °C)

This temperature range is above the glass transition temperature of the PLA, ABS, PETG and Nylon are all well below 180 °C and therefore aren't worth considering. Your best option is PolyCarbonate, or PolyCarbonate-ABS which are both fairly high (roughly 140-150 °C). However, are both below your minimum temperature threshold.

My conclusion is to try a polycarbonate sample and see how it reacts to the chemicals you're working with, though it doesn't look hopeful.

For Chemical reactivity, I did some Google-fu and found a few links that look helpful for PolyCarbonate:

Community
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Diesel
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Polyoxymethylene (POM) filament (known as Delrin or acetal) is suited to applications involving chemicals: it is chemically resistant to solvents, hydrocarbons, and neutral chemicals.

FarO
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