Micromixing enhancement in a novel passive mixer with symmetrical cylindrical grooves

Abstract

AbstractA passive micromixer with symmetrical cylindrical grooves along the channel was designed, fabricated and characterized. Systematic numerical simulations of mixing with Re ranging from 1.0 to 500 predict the optimized parameters and the mixing enhancement. The optimized depth of the cylindrical grooves is 100 µm. The experimental results have also confirmed the improvement of the mixing effect. Considering pressure drop and mixing enhancement, Re values of 10 and 100 are suitable for mixing of liquids with diffusion coefficients of 10−9 and 6 × 10−11 m2/s, respectively. The percentage of mixing of this micromixer is 2.22‐fold better than that of common Y‐mixer with Re of 10 at the distance of 19 mm from the meeting point of two fluids with the diffusion coefficient of 10−9 m2/s; similarly, the percentage of mixing of the new design is 2.18 times better than that of common Y‐mixer with Re of 100 at the distance of 19 mm from the meeting point of two fluids with the diffusion coefficient of 6 × 10−11 m2/s. This easy fabricated micromixer can be utilized for biological reactions and analytical assays. © 2015 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.