Computational and Experimental Study of Gas Bubbles Removal in a Microfluidic System

Abstract

Formation of unwanted bubbles is one the main issues in biomicrofluidics-based applications such as lab-on-a-chip devices, and adversely affects the performance of these systems. In this work we report a simple and efficient method for removing gas bubbles from liquid filled microchannels. This bubble removal system consists of a cavity on which a hydrophobic membrane is bonded parallel to the main fluidic channel to vent gas bubbles normal to the flow direction. A T-junction configuration is used to generate gas bubbles prior to entering the bubble removal cavity. A finite volume-based computational model is developed using ANSYS FLUENT to simulate gas removal characteristics of the system. The effects of various geometric parameters and operating conditions are studied both through numerical simulations and experimentally.