Horizontal deflection of single particle in a paramagnetic fluid

Abstract

This paper describes the horizontal deflection behaviour of a single particle in paramagnetic fluids under a high-gradient superconducting magnetic field. A glass box was designed to carry out experiments and test assumptions. It was found that the particles were deflected away from the magnet bore centre and particles with different density and susceptibility settled at a certain position on the container floor due to the combined forces of gravity and magneto-Archimedes as well as lateral buoyant (displacement) force. Matlab was chosen to simulate the movement of the particle in the magnetic fluid, the simulation results were in good accordance with experimental data. The results presented here, though is still very much in its infancy, which could potentially form the basis of a new approach to separating materials based on a combination of density and susceptibility.

Levitation of non-magnetizable droplet inside ferrofluid

“…In a similar manner, it has also been used in biological cell sorting at microscale utilizing a magnetic fluid as the outer phase liquid (Zhu 2013). The transport of diamagnetic particles is another application (Dunne et al 2007;Liu et al 2014;Zhu et al 2011b). As sometimes required in biology, the gravity compensating environment can also be achieved through the levitation of non-magnetizable objects inside ferrofluids (Beysens & van Loon 2015).…”