Numerical Investigation of Mixing by Induced Electrokinetic Flow in T-Micromixer with Conductive Curved Arc Plate

Mixing is essential in microdevices. Therefore, increasing the mixing efficiency has a significant influence on these devices. Using conductive obstacles with special geometry can improve the mixing quality of the micromixers. In this paper, a numerical study on the mixing caused by an induced-charge electrokinetic micromixer was carried out using a conductive plate with a curved arc shape instead of a conductive flat plate or other non-conductive obstacles for Newtonian fluids. This study also explored the effect of the different radius curves, span length, the number of curved arc plates in the channel, the pattern of arrangement, concavity direction, and the orientation angle against the flow on the mixing. Furthermore, the efficiency of the T-micromixer against a flow with a low diffusion coefficient was investigated. It should be noted that the considered channel is symmetric regarding to the middle horizontal plane and an addition of flat plate reflects a formation of symmetric flow structures that do not allow to improve the mixture process. While an addition of non-symmetric curved arc plates al-lows to increase the mixing by creating vortices. These vortices were created owing to the non-uniform distribution of induced zeta potential on the curved arc plate. A rise in the span length of the curved arc plate when the radius was constant improved the mixing. When three arc plates in one concavity direction were used, the mixing efficiency was 91.86%, and with a change in the concavity direction, the mixing efficiency increased to 95.44%. With a change in the orientation angle from 0 to 25, the mixing efficiency increased by 19.2%.

[1]  Susan S. Huang,et al.  Rapid detection of single bacteria in unprocessed blood using Integrated Comprehensive Droplet Digital Detection , 2014, Nature Communications.

[2]  Nam-Trung Nguyen,et al.  Nonlinear diffusive mixing in microchannels: theory and experiments , 2004 .

[3]  M. Raisee,et al.  Numerical analysis of mixed electroosmotic/pressure driven flow of power-law fluids in microchannels and micropumps , 2011 .

[4]  E. Karvelas,et al.  Numerical study of magnetic particles mixing in waste water under an external magnetic field , 2020, Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology-Aqua.

[5]  Mahmut Burak Okuducu,et al.  Novel 3-D T-Shaped Passive Micromixer Design with Helicoidal Flows , 2019, Processes.

[6]  Jan G. Korvink,et al.  Topology optimization of electrode patterns for electroosmotic micromixer , 2018, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

[7]  Yu-Lin Kuo,et al.  Performance characterization of passive micromixer with dual opposing strips on microchannel walls , 2015 .

[8]  WooSeok Choi,et al.  Electroosmotic Flows of Power-Law Fluids with Asymmetric Electrochemical Boundary Conditions in a Rectangular Microchannel , 2017, Micromachines.

[9]  Mohammad Yaghoub Abdollahzadeh Jamalabadi,et al.  Numerical Simulation of Micromixing of Particles and Fluids with Galloping Cylinder , 2020, Symmetry.

[10]  Dongqing Li,et al.  Mixing and flow regulating by induced-charge electrokinetic flow in a microchannel with a pair of conducting triangle hurdles , 2008 .

[11]  A. Ramiar,et al.  High efficiency micromixing technique using periodic induced charge electroosmotic flow: A numerical study , 2017 .

[12]  Dongqing Li,et al.  Experimental validation of induced-charge electrokinetic motion of electrically conducting particles , 2013 .

[13]  A. deMello Control and detection of chemical reactions in microfluidic systems , 2006, Nature.

[14]  Mehmet Melih Tatlιsoz,et al.  Pulsatile flow micromixing coupled with ICEO for non-Newtonian fluids , 2018, Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification.

[15]  A. Manz,et al.  Lab-on-a-chip: microfluidics in drug discovery , 2006, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

[16]  J. A. Esfahani,et al.  A comprehensive geometrical study on an induced-charge electrokinetic micromixer equipped with electrically conductive plates , 2020 .

[17]  S. Azimi,et al.  Developing a fast and tunable micro-mixer using induced vortices around a conductive flexible link , 2017 .

[18]  S. Azimi,et al.  Fluid physics around conductive deformable flaps within an induced-charge electrokinetically driven microsystem , 2016 .

[19]  Chih-Yang Wu,et al.  Numerical Study of T-Shaped Micromixers with Vortex-Inducing Obstacles in the Inlet Channels , 2020, Micromachines.

[20]  Dongqing Li,et al.  Effects of ionic concentration gradient on electroosmotic flow mixing in a microchannel. , 2015, Journal of colloid and interface science.

[21]  Chieh-Li Chen,et al.  Mixing enhancement of electrokinetically-driven non-Newtonian fluids in microchannel with patterned blocks , 2012 .

[22]  H. Niazmand,et al.  A double MRT-LBM for simulation of mixing in an active micromixer with rotationally oscillating stirrer in high Peclet number flows , 2018, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

[23]  Dongqing Li,et al.  Micromixing using induced-charge electrokinetic flow , 2008 .

[24]  Dongqing Li,et al.  Numerical study of a novel induced-charge electrokinetic micro-mixer. , 2013, Analytica chimica acta.

[25]  A. Miguel,et al.  Constructal branched micromixers with enhanced mixing efficiency: Slender design, sphere mixing chamber and obstacles , 2019, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

[26]  R. Taheri,et al.  Mixing Performance of a Cost-effective Split-and-Recombine 3D Micromixer Fabricated by Xurographic Method , 2019, Micromachines.

[27]  Mehdi Mirzakhanloo,et al.  Numerical Simulation for efficient mixing of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids in an electro-osmotic micro-mixer , 2016 .

[28]  Amir Shamloo,et al.  Three-dimensional numerical simulation of a novel electroosmotic micromixer , 2017 .

[29]  Lisa J. Lapidus,et al.  Complete Procedure for Fabrication of a Fused Silica Ultrarapid Microfluidic Mixer Used in Biophysical Measurements , 2017, Micromachines.

[30]  Dan Gao,et al.  A novel 3D breast-cancer-on-chip platform for therapeutic evaluation of drug delivery systems. , 2018, Analytica chimica acta.

[31]  A. Farahinia,et al.  Numerical investigation into the mixing performance of micro T-mixers with different patterns of obstacles , 2019, Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.

[32]  Chieh-Li Chen,et al.  Mixing enhancement in crisscross micromixer using aperiodic electrokinetic perturbing flows , 2012 .

[33]  S. Bhattacharyya,et al.  Combined electroosmosis-pressure driven flow and mixing in a microchannel with surface heterogeneity , 2015 .

[34]  Theodoros E. Karakasidis,et al.  Micromixing Efficiency of Particles in Heavy Metal Removal Processes under Various Inlet Conditions , 2019, Water.

[35]  J. A. Esfahani,et al.  Mixing process and mass transfer in a novel design of induced-charge electrokinetic micromixer with a conductive mixing-chamber , 2019, International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer.

[36]  Xueye Chen,et al.  Numerical and experimental investigation on micromixers with serpentine microchannels , 2016 .