Growth of clogs in parallel microchannels

Abstract

During the transport of colloidal suspensions in microchannels, the deposition of particles can lead to the formation of clogs, typically at constrictions. Once a clog is formed in a microchannel, advected particles form an aggregate upstream from the site of the blockage. This aggregate grows over time, which leads to a dramatic reduction of the flow rate. In this paper, we present a model that predicts the growth of the aggregate formed upon clogging of a microchannel. We develop an analytical description that captures the time evolution of the volume of the aggregate, as confirmed by experiments performed using a pressure-driven suspension flow in a microfluidic device. We show that the growth of the aggregate increases the hydraulic resistance in the channel and leads to a drop in the flow rate of the suspensions. We then derive a model for the growth of aggregates in multiple parallel microchannels where the clogging events are described using a stochastic approach. The aggregate growths in the different channels are coupled. Our work illustrates the critical influence of clogging events on the evolution of the flow rate in microchannels. The coupled dynamics of the aggregates described here for parallel channels is key to bridge clogging at the pore scale with macroscopic observations of the flow rate evolution at the filter scale.

Particle Migration and Clogging in Porous Media: A Convergent Flow Microfluidics Study

“…Dependent clogging is significantly more frequent than independent clogging, especially for glass particles due to the heightened inertial retardation in the surroundings. These results underscore the “cross talk” between pores observed in parallel microchannel experiments (Liot et al, ; Sauret et al, ; Van Zwieten et al, ).…”

Entrainment of particles during the withdrawal of a fibre from a dilute suspension

“…Furthermore, recent experiments on a 2-D plate have demonstrated that individual particles are entrained if the radius of the particle a satisfies the condition αa ≤ h * , where α is a prefactor (α 1.1 ± 0.1) accounting for the complex shape of the meniscus around the particle. The particle can deform the air-liquid interface and be entrained, contrarily to particle confined between solid boundaries that cannot flow through a channel whose size is smaller than the particle diameter because of sieving (Sauret et al 2014(Sauret et al , 2018Dressaire & Sauret 2017). The existence of the different regimes have led to a new method of capillary filtration (Dincau et al 2019).…”

Propagation and adsorption of nanoparticles in porous medium as traveling waves

“…On the other side, there has been several direct observations of some processes, in particular clogging effects, in simplified systems (2D and/or at pore scale) [23,[34][35][36][37][38][39], and qualitative static imaging or indirect imaging in realistic systems [40][41][42]. Besides, detailed visualizations at the pore scale inside 3D porous media provided a full set of information on the local mechanisms of bacterial motion and trapping [43,44].…”