Hossain, S. (2017) - A Micromixer With Two-Layer Serpentine Crossing Channels Having Excellent Mixing Permormance at Low Reynolds Numbers
Hossain, S. (2017) - A Micromixer With Two-Layer Serpentine Crossing Channels Having Excellent Mixing Permormance at Low Reynolds Numbers
Hossain, S. (2017) - A Micromixer With Two-Layer Serpentine Crossing Channels Having Excellent Mixing Permormance at Low Reynolds Numbers
h i g h l i g h t s
Experimental and numerical analyses of a novel micromixer with two-layer crossing channels were performed.
The micromixer showed at least 96% mixing throughout a Reynolds number range (0.2–120).
At low Reynolds numbers (0.2–10), the micromixer showed about 99% mixing at the exit.
The proposed micromixer showed lower pressure drop than TLCCM for Re larger than 10.
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: A novel design is presented for a chaotic micromixer using two-layer serpentine crossing microchannels.
Received 7 May 2017 The performance of the micromixer was analyzed both numerically and experimentally. The numerical
Received in revised form 13 June 2017 analysis was performed using three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations with a convection–diffusion
Accepted 20 June 2017
model for the species concentration in a Reynolds number range of 0.2–120. An experimental model of
Available online 21 June 2017
the micromixer was fabricated by soft lithography with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Two working flu-
ids, water and dye-water mixture were used for numerical analysis except for the experimental valida-
Keywords:
tion of numerical results. Both the numerical and experimental analyses confirm that the micromixer
Mixing
Chaotic micromixer
achieves a high level of mixing over a wide range of Reynolds numbers through splitting, enlarging,
Two-layer serpentine crossing recombination, and folding mechanisms. The micromixer showed over 95% mixing throughout the tested
microchannels range of Reynolds number. Especially, about 99% mixing was achieved at Reynolds numbers less than ten.
Experimental analysis Thus, the proposed micromixer can be used in microfluidic systems which require fast mixing at low
Navier-Stokes equations Reynolds numbers.
Ó 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2017.06.106
1385-8947/Ó 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
S. Hossain et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 327 (2017) 268–277 269
Fig. 1. Micromixer geometry with two-layer serpentine crossing microchannels and geometric parameters. (a) Schematic diagram of the top and bottom channel layers with
inverse-N and N-shaped segments, respectively. (b) 3D view of the micromixer, where both the layers are interconnected at the middle of the ‘‘X” shape and the vertical
sections. (c) Locations of cross-sectional planes A1–A9 at the nodes of the crossing structures. (d) Optical image of the micromixer with nine mixing units. (e) Optical image of
a micromixer composed of four mixing units used only for the parametric study (the dotted ellipse in the left figure is enlarged in the right figure).
length, and chaotic advection enlarges the contact surface by efficiency in the laminar flow regime. A chaotic flow structure
manipulating the bulk flow inside the microchannels [11]. can be generated by modifying the channel shape so that the lam-
Several studies reveal that micromixers based on chaotic advec- inar flow continually stretches, folds, splits, and recombines within
tion show efficient mixing in an extensive range of Reynolds num- the channel. This flow phenomenon is reported for various
ber [10,12]. Chaotic advection caused by the periodic perturbation microchannel shapes [13,14], including a staggered herringbone
of the two-dimensional flow can remarkably enhance the mixing structure [15], split and recombine structure [16], Tesla structure
270 S. Hossain et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 327 (2017) 268–277
[17], twisted channels [18], grooved channels [19], and barriers on in repeating patterns of splitting and recombination of the fluid
the channel walls [20]. streams.
Liu et al. [21] designed a 3D serpentine microchannel to gener- For the reference micromixer geometry, the main channel
ate rapid stretching and folding of the fluid streams, which pro- width (H), diagonal channel width (w), length of the vertical seg-
duced chaotic advection. However, a relatively high Reynolds ment (b), pitch length (P), depth of the single channel (d), and
number (>25) was required to generate the chaotic advection. number of mixing units were fixed at 1.07 mm, 0.30 mm,
Stroock et al. [15] achieved a 3D twisting flow mechanism in a 0.15 mm, 0.64 mm, 0.15 mm, and 9, respectively. Thus, the depth
microchannel with diagonally oriented ridges on the bottom wall. of the micromixer (D) is equal to 2 d. The cross-sectional dimen-
They also developed staggered herringbone structure patterns at sions of the inlets and outlet are 0.15 0.3 mm and
the bottom of the microchannel, in which chaotic mixing is 0.3 0.3 mm, respectively. Figs. 1(d) and (e) show optical images
obtained by alternating velocity fields. Aubin et al. [22] observed of the proposed micromixer with nine mixing units and four mix-
counter-rotating vortices in a mixer with staggered herringbone ing units, respectively. The nine-unit mixer was considered for the
grooves (SHG) using numerical simulation. Johnson et al. [23] used flow analyses, while the four-unit mixer was considered in a para-
slanted grooves at the bottom surface of a T-shaped micromixer metric study to save computational time.
and obtained remarkably enhanced mixing by transverse fluid
transport. Kim et al. [20] proposed a micromixer with barriers on
3. Numerical analysis
slanted grooves, which generated chaotic mixing due to the regular
perturbation of the flow field. Periodically situated barriers were
Numerical analysis of the flow and mixing was accomplished
capable of creating alternating velocity fields within the helical
using the commercial CFD code ANSYS CFX 15.0Ò [27]. The finite
motion, which resulted in remarkable enhancement of chaotic
volume technique was used to solve the governing differential
mixing.
equations. The governing equations for fluid flow are the 3D steady
Hong et al. [17] developed an in-plane passive micromixer
continuity and Navier-Stokes equations:
using two-dimensional Tesla structures to create transverse dis-
Mass conservation:
persion, which produced chaotic advection and significantly
enhanced the mixing. Wang and Yang [24] obtained a chaotic flow r ðq~
VÞ ¼ 0 ð1Þ
pattern using staggered overlapping crisscross microchannels,
which resulted from two chaotic mixing mechanisms involving Momentum conservation:
stretching and folding of the fluid streams. Kim et al. [25] devel- 1
oped a serpentine lamination micromixer (SLM) based on chaotic ð~ V ¼ rp þ mr2 ~
V rÞ~ V ð2Þ
q
mixing mechanisms, which included F-shaped mixing segments.
The mixing performance was enhanced by merging two chaotic where V, q, and m represent the velocity, density, and kinematic vis-
mixing mechanisms. Park et al. [26] improved the mixing effi- cosity of the fluid, respectively. Numerical diffusion errors are
ciency of an SLM by geometric modification. induced by the discretization of the convection terms in the govern-
Xia et al. [12] proposed one of the most interesting passive ing equations. These errors can be minimized by introducing a high-
micromixers using a chaotic flow pattern. The micromixer con- resolution numerical scheme of second-order approximation [28].
sisted of two-layer crossing channels (TLCCM), which showed an The SIMPLEC (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure Linked
excellent overall mixing performance in a wide range of Reynolds Equations-Consistent) algorithm [29] was used for the pressure
numbers. This micromixer created chaotic advection through split- velocity coupling.
ting, enlarging, recombination, and folding, and a high mixing The conservation of mass transport equation [30] for each fluid
index of 0.96 was achieved even at a low Reynolds number of 0.2. component with constant viscosity and density is:
In the present study, a chaotic micromixer with two-layer ser-
pentine crossing channels is proposed for further enhancement ðv rÞC ¼ ar2 C ð3Þ
of the mixing performance at low Reynolds numbers while retain-
where a and C are the diffusivity coefficient and concentration of
ing high performance in high Reynolds number range. The fluid
the fluid component, respectively. This equation was used to model
flow characteristics and mixing phenomena were investigated
the diffusive mixing of multi-component fluids [31]. The boundary
both numerically and experimentally. The numerical analysis is
conditions were a no-slip condition at the walls, atmospheric pres-
based on 3D Navier-Stokes equations with a convection–diffusion
sure at the outlet, and uniform velocity at the inlets (in a range of
model for the species concentration. The micromixer was fabri-
0.001–0.6 ms1). Pure water and a dye-water mixture enter
cated using a soft lithography technique with PDMS for experi-
through inlet 1 and inlet 2, where the mass fractions of water are
mental analyses. The numerical results for mixing index were
zero and one, respectively. The dynamic viscosity (m) and density
validated using experimental data in a wide Reynolds number
(q) of water were measured at 25 °C as 8.8 104 kg/m-s and
range of 0.2 to 120. Superiority of the proposed micromixer
997 kg/m3, respectively [32]. The diffusion coefficient of the dye-
was proved compared to three previous micromixers including
water mixture was 1 1011 m2/s [12]. To achieve maximum accu-
TLCCM [12].
racy of the numerical solutions, the governing equations were
solved iteratively until normalized root-mean-square residual val-
ues of less than 1 106 were obtained.
2. Micromixer model
The mixing performance was evaluated by a variance-based
method. The variance of the liquid species can be calculated in a
The proposed micromixer comprises two layers of serpentine
cross-sectional plane perpendicular to the flow:
structures, as shown in Fig. 1. The top and bottom channels are
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
arranged in a periodic fashion with segments that have ‘‘inverse- u N
u1 X
N” and ‘‘N” shapes, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The main serpentine r¼t ðci cm Þ2 ð4Þ
channels have an angle of 90° with respect to the inlets, as shown N i¼0
in Figs. 1(b) and (c). Fluids in the two-layered channels are inter-
connected through the middles of the ‘‘X” shapes and the vertical where N is the number of sampling points in the cross-sectional
sections. The successive arrangement of the mixing units results plane, and cm and ci are the optimal mass fraction and mass fraction
S. Hossain et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 327 (2017) 268–277 271
Fig. 3. Validation of the mixing indices at the exit of the micromixer with nine
4. Device fabrication and experimental procedure
mixing units (x/w = 25) using experimental data in the Reynolds number range of
0.2–120.
Micromixers were fabricated using PDMS elastomer based
micro-molding technique known as soft lithography. Briefly, a pho- wafer by photo-lithography, and a mixture of PDMS pre-polymer
toresist (SU8-2050, MicroChem) mold was fabricated on a silicon and cross-linker (with a weight ratio of 10:1) was poured onto
272 S. Hossain et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 327 (2017) 268–277
Table 1
Tested Reynolds numbers and the corresponding flow rates.
Fig. 4. Comparison of mixing indices at micromixer exits among the four different
chaotic micromixers in the Reynolds number range of 0.2 to 120. The axial length of
the micromixers was kept constant (x = 7.5 mm).
challenging, which was one of the main reasons for the geometrical
variation. Thus, the micromixer geometry used in the numerical
calculation was modified to fit the real geometry of the experimen-
tal model for the validation. However, the walls were assumed to
be smooth in the numerical calculations, which might contribute
to the differences between the numerical results and experimental
data.
Moreover, to measure experimental uncertainties in mixing
index, the mixing indices were compared between the numerical
and experimental results using a micromixer of 4 units. Mixing
index error was calculated as,
ðMSim M Exp Þ
Mixing index error ¼ ð7Þ
M Sim
Fig. 7. Optical images of the fluid mixing in the first and last mixing units at Re = 15 and 60.
274 S. Hossain et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 327 (2017) 268–277
Fig. 8. Velocity vectors on y-z planes at the nodes of the crossing structures at Re = 0.2.
Fig. 9. Velocity vectors at different cross-sectional planes to explain the formation of the saddle- shaped flow pattern at the node of the crossing structure at Re = 0.2.
S. Hossain et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 327 (2017) 268–277 275
6. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
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