A pH-Sensitive Laser-Induced Fluorescence Technique To Monitor Mass Transfer in Multiphase Flows in Microfluidic Devices

Abstract

We present a pH-sensitive laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique to investigate mass transfer in reactive flows. As a fluorescent dye, we used 5-(and-6)-carboxy SNARF-1, which, when excited with a pulsed Nd:YAG laser at 532 nm, provides good sensitivity in the range 4 ≤ pH ≤ 12. For validation, we first applied the dye to single-phase reactive flows by investigating the neutralization of sodium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid. Comparison to the classical passive mixing case showed that this dye was able to capture the reaction progress and to quantify the mass transport. Next, we investigated the absorption of CO2 in an alkaline solution using gas–liquid flow and found that the LIF technique is able to quantify the local mass-transfer rate in microfluidic systems. Results for different microchannel geometries highlight the strong connection between local mass transfer and secondary flow structures in gas–liquid Taylor flow.