Numerical simulation and structural recombination of microchannel micromixer for excellent mixing performance

Abstract

A facile continuous flow micromixer with a novel internal structure is developed to improve the mixing effect through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Meanwhile, an authentic transparent micromixer was prepared following the mathematical model of the micromixer, and reliability of the simulation was verified by result comparison of fluid mixing performance. Moreover, several internal structures were designed and their mixing effect was calculated. Using velocity inlet and pressure outlet, ignoring the change of energy during the mixing process, it is shown that the structure of the micro-mixer has a positive effect on the mixing effect at Re < 1200. In the cubic structure, the fluid is dominated by molecular diffusion, the increase of concavity and convexity structure makes the fluid produce spiral flow, and the fluid separates and recombines many times in the mixed structure, the convective mixing process is superior to the molecular diffusion process and the mixing effect is improved. Furthermore, it was astonished that the addition of cubic structure inside convex-concave structures (a recombination structure), improve the mixing index as well as reducing the flow resistance by increasing fluid-to-fluid interface area.