Liquid Flow and Mass Transfer Behaviors in a Butterfly-Shaped Microreactor

Abstract

Based on the split-and-recombine principle, a millimeter-scale butterfly-shaped microreactor was designed and fabricated through femtosecond laser micromachining. The velocity fields, streamlines and pressure fields of the single-phase flow in the microreactor were obtained by a computational fluid dynamics simulation, and the influence of flow rates on the homogeneous mixing efficiency was quantified by the mixing index. The flow behaviors in the microreactor were investigated using water and n-butanol, from which schematic diagrams of various flow patterns were given and a flow pattern map was established for regulating the flow behavior via controlling the flow rates of the two-phase flow. Furthermore, effects of the two-phase flow rates on the droplet flow behavior (droplet number, droplet size and standard deviation) in the microreactor were investigated. In addition, the interfacial mass transfer behaviors of liquid–liquid flow were evaluated using the standard low interfacial tension system of “n-butanol/succinic acid/water”, where the dependence between the flow pattern and mass transfer was discussed. The empirical relationship between the volumetric mass transfer coefficient and Reynold number was established with prediction error less than 20%.