What is it about?
We present the design of a low-cost, 3D-printed flow cell for tomographic imaging and make the designs freely available so that researchers may use and adapt them to suit their experimental needs. We demonstrate its success with an analog system for metal recovery from WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) waste streams. The system is deployed on K11-DIAD.
Featured Image
Photo by Ty Feague on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Solid-liquid chemistry is vital to many industrial processes. Flow cells, optimized for tomography, allow for studying these processes in-situ. Precipitation reactions can be viewed in real-time and visualised in 3D. But to get to that point requires a lot of iterative design work and often results in systems that are complex and expensive. We demonstrate a 3D-printed cell that can be constructed for a low-cost and utilised for studying liquid-solid chemistry with both lab and synchrotron CT instruments.
Perspectives
Flow cells are complex bits of kit that are often highly tuned to the system of interest. We needed to make something that could be deployed quickly but that also was generic enough to suit our wide user base. We also wanted to make it available for other researchers to adapt and use. The work presented also demonstrates K-11 DIAD’s ability to rapidly prototype and deploy a new sample environment to suit users-experimental needs.
Liam Perera
Diamond Light Source
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The design of a low-cost 3D printed flow cell for synchrotron computed microtomography, Journal of Synchrotron Radiation, February 2026, International Union of Crystallography,
DOI: 10.1107/s1600577526000123.
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