Numerical Modeling of Sequential Segmentation for Enhancement of Mixing Inside Microchannels

What is it about?

Mixing in microchannels is challenging due to the laminar nature of the flow on such small scale. By sequential pumping of discrete plugs from the two solutions to be mixed, mixing rates a few orders of magnitude higher can be achieved. Here we present a 3D numerical model to simulate mixing enhancement using sequential segmentation. We studied the effect of segmentation frequency, microchannel geometry, flow velocity and segmentation duty cycle.

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Why is it important?

Or model is the first 3D model to study sequential segmentation. This allowed us to study parameters that has not been studied before such as the channel aspect ratio, which has a significant effect on the mixing efficiency.