Abstract
Microchannel reactors are critical in biological plus energy-related applications and require meticulous design of hundreds-to-thousands of fluid flow channels. Such systems commonly comprise intricate space-filling microstructures to control the fluid flow distribution for the reaction process. Traditional flow channel design schemes are intuition-based or utilize analytical rule-based optimization strategies that are oversimplified for large-scale domains of arbitrary geometry. Here, a gradient-based optimization method is proposed, where effective porous media and fluid velocity vector design information is exploited and linked to explicit microchannel parameterizations. Reaction-diffusion equations are then utilized to generate space-filling Turing pattern microchannel flow structures from the porous media field. With this computationally efficient and broadly applicable technique, precise control of fluid flow distribution is demonstrated across large numbers (on the order of hundreds) of microchannels.
Highlights
Microchannel flow structures are found in a range of important industrial applications involving water purification (Wang et al 2014), pharmaceuticals (Gutmann et al 2015), electronics (Chen and Cheng 2002), and green chemistry (Lerou et al 2010)
A Dirichlet boundary condition (BC) for the reaction-diffusion model is applied along the same top edge of the domain and on a horizontal inner boundary slightly (3 mm) below the top edge to enforce a precise channel width distribution
Reaction-diffusion equations form the basis of the microchannel dehomogenization post-processing technique, where the porous media field is linked to explicit representation of the rendered microstructure
Summary
Microchannel flow structures are found in a range of important industrial applications involving water purification (Wang et al 2014), pharmaceuticals (Gutmann et al 2015), electronics (Chen and Cheng 2002), and green chemistry (Lerou et al 2010). Such systems require careful handling of fluid species to control reaction processes. The flow distribution of fluids is critical, and intricate space-filling channel structures are employed for flow control through single- or multi-layered (e.g., 100–10,000) microchannels.
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