Regulating the Gas–Liquid Slug Flow in Microchannels through High-Frequency Pulsatile Perturbations

Abstract

The gas–liquid slug flow that is characterized with alternate formation of gas and liquid segments has been widely applied for chemical synthesis and analysis. For its applications, it is essential to precisely control the gas and liquid slug lengths. However, using the passive method, the bubble/droplet generation frequency and their sizes are influenced by multiple parameters including the channel dimension, fluid physical properties, the gas-to-liquid flow rate ratio, and so forth and hence lack control flexibility. In this work, an active approach using pulsatile perturbations to control the gas–liquid slug flow is demonstrated. A rotating valve is applied to produce a high-frequency pulsating air flow. Under its influence, either Taylor bubbles in a hydrophilic channel or liquid-in-gas droplets in a hydrophobic channel can be generated synchronously with the flow pulsation. Therefore, the gas and liquid slug lengths can be independently tuned via the air inlet pressure and the liquid flow rate, respectively. The maximum generation frequency is up to ∼1300 Hz. In addition, the effects of the pulsation frequency, the pulse duty ratio, and the liquid viscosity are also investigated. This technique provides an efficient method to regulate the gas–liquid slug flow in multiphase microreactors or microfluidic analytical systems.