Numerical and experimental investigations of mixing in T-shaped and cross-shaped micromixers

Ait-Mouheb, Nassim; Malsch, Daniéll; Montillet, Agnès; Solliec, Camille; Henkel, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.ces.2011.09.036

Cited by 86 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The value of the current study is in good agreement with most numerical values in the literature (e.g. [5,7,8,10,28]) and is within 4% of the mesh-independent value obtained using Richardson's extrapolation technique in [12]. …”

Section: Comparison To Literature Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

Symmetry-breaking Bifurcations in T-channel Flows: Effects of Fluid Viscoelasticity

Poole

Haward

Alves

2014

Procedia Engineering

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It is well known that, beyond a critical aspect-ratio-dependent Reynolds number, the flow in a three-dimensional T-channel junction, i.e. two-opposing planar channel streams joining and turning through 90 degrees, can break symmetry. For the case of two square cross-section inlets and an outlet arm of equal area (i.e. aspect ratio of two) this bifurcation is to a steady asymmetric flow. This flow bifurcation has been proposed as a method of enhancing mixing in microfluidic channels where significant increases in mixing quality are observed beyond the bifurcation. In the current work we investigate numerically the effects of viscoelasticity on this supercritical pitchfork bifurcation using a numerical finite-volume method. Results from both the upperconvected Maxwell and Oldroyd-B models show that the instability occurs at lower Reynolds numbers for viscoelastic fluids in comparison to the Newtonian base case. At higher Deborah numbers the transition leads directly to an unsteady flow.

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Section: Comparison To Literature Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

Symmetry-breaking Bifurcations in T-channel Flows: Effects of Fluid Viscoelasticity

Poole

Haward

Alves

2014

Procedia Engineering

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“…Due to the great potential applications of microfluidic systems in intensification of liquid‐liquid mixing performance, the synthesis of organic materials by microfluidic techniques has been increased in biomedical and pharmaceutical engineering domains . Specifically, small dimensions of microfluidic devices confine the formation of vortices by restriction of the flow, so the solution in micro‐flow systems generates a laminar flow pattern . Significant efforts have been made to develop means to accelerate the diffusion rate in microfluidic geometries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the mixing characteristics of a poorly water soluble drug through microfluidic‐assisted nanoprecipitation: Experimental and numerical study

et al. 2017

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Nanoprecipitation of curcumin from its ethanolic solutions was carried out at a microfluidic scale by the liquid anti‐solvent technique, in the presence of SDS as a stabilizer. Attention was mainly paid to the mixing angle of the water and ethanol in three micro‐fabricated channels. The nanosuspension quality was measured by particle size distribution and polydispersity index. BET surface area, dissolution test, FTIR spectra, and XRD patterns of the optimized nanosuspension were also evaluated experimentally. In particular, narrow size distribution of curcumin particles was achieved under well‐controlled conditions of large confluence angles. The amorphous ultrafine curcumin powder exhibited enhanced dissolution properties when compared to the raw material. To explain the precipitation results, a species 3D model was created by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The pressure drop was compared to the quantitative experimental data to validate the CFD computations. Altogether, the similarities in observations and the mass fraction and velocity predictions of the 3D model revealed that the injection angle of microfluidic devices is a key parameter for the resultant curcumin nanoparticle size.

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“…ANSYS Fluent provides comprehensive tools for fluid flow modeling and has been employed in many microfluidics studies (Mouheb et al, 2012;Wong et al, 2004;Bothe et al, 2008;Yang et al, 2015). The mixing process of two different fluids, namely pure water (bulk liquid) and a flow tracer, was simulated in the Fluent software by solving three-dimensional equations of conservation of mass and momentum and convection-diffusion.…”

Section: Numerical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each geometry had more than 500 sampling nodes distributed uniformly on the outlet plane in order to ensure high accuracy. Discretization of the convection term in the governing equations introduces numerical diffusion error which causes overestimation of the mixing quality in the simulation results (Mouheb et al, 2012). In order to minimize the numerical error, higher-order discretization schemes were employed in the calculations (Hardt and Schönfeld, 2003).…”

Section: Numerical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixing performance evaluation of additive manufactured milli-scale reactors

Woldemariam

Filimonov

Purtonen

et al. 2016

Chemical Engineering Science

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New design method based on CFD and AM technology was applied to milli-reactors. CFD simulations were validated empirically with step responses and model reactions. 4-way inlet reactor with zigzag mixing channel showed the best mixing performance. a b s t r a c tThe mixing performance of three passive milli-scale reactors with different geometries was investigated at different Reynolds numbers. The effects of design and operating characteristics such as mixing channel shape and volume flow rate were investigated. The main objective of this work was to demonstrate a process design method that uses on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for modeling and Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology for manufacture. The reactors were designed and simulated using SolidWorks and Fluent 15.0 software, respectively. Manufacturing of the devices was performed with an EOS M-series AM system.Step response experiments with distilled Millipore water and sodium hydroxide solution provided time-dependent concentration profiles. Villermaux-Dushman reaction experiments were also conducted for additional verification of CFD results and for mixing efficiency evaluation of the different geometries. Time-dependent concentration data and reaction evaluation showed that the performance of the AM-manufactured reactors matched the CFD results reasonably well. The proposed design method allows the implementation of new and innovative solutions, especially in the process design phase, for industrial scale reactor technologies. In addition, rapid implementation is another advantage due to the virtual flow design and due to the fast manufacturing which uses the same geometric file formats.

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Numerical and experimental investigations of mixing in T-shaped and cross-shaped micromixers

Cited by 86 publications

References 17 publications

Symmetry-breaking Bifurcations in T-channel Flows: Effects of Fluid Viscoelasticity

Symmetry-breaking Bifurcations in T-channel Flows: Effects of Fluid Viscoelasticity

On the mixing characteristics of a poorly water soluble drug through microfluidic‐assisted nanoprecipitation: Experimental and numerical study

Mixing performance evaluation of additive manufactured milli-scale reactors

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