Issue 4, 2019

Analysis and simulation of multiphase hydrodynamics in capillary microseparators

Abstract

The capillary microseparator is an important microfluidic device for achieving the inline separation of biphasic segmented flows. While it has found wide applications in areas such as on-chip synthesis of pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, many aspects regarding its operating ranges and hydrodynamic details remain to be elucidated. In this work, we employ OpenFOAM computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method to systematically simulate the performance of the capillary microseparator under the retention, normal operation and breakthrough regimes. The three distinct operating regimes are in accordance with experimental observations. In addition, the simulations enable quantification of the instantaneous flow rate through each micron-scale capillary microchannel and provide detailed predictions even under very low pressure differences (∼10 Pa), both of which are difficult to achieve experimentally. Furthermore, inspired by high-resolution hydrodynamics from the CFD simulations, we develop a simple analytic expression that predicts the retention threshold of the microseparator in good agreement with the simulated results and recent computations and experimental data.

Graphical abstract: Analysis and simulation of multiphase hydrodynamics in capillary microseparators

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 noy 2018
Accepted
15 yan 2019
First published
17 yan 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Lab Chip, 2019,19, 706-715

Analysis and simulation of multiphase hydrodynamics in capillary microseparators

L. Yang, A. Ładosz and K. F. Jensen, Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 706 DOI: 10.1039/C8LC01296B

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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