A high-power ultrasonic microreactor and its application in gas–liquid mass transfer intensification

Abstract

The combination of ultrasound and microreactor is an emerging and promising area, but the report of designing high-power ultrasonic microreactor (USMR) is still limited. This work presents a robust, high-power and highly efficient USMR by directly coupling a microreactor plate with a Langevin-type transducer. The USMR is designed as a longitudinal half wavelength resonator, for which the antinode plane of the highest sound intensity is located at the microreactor. According to one dimension design theory, numerical simulation and impedance analysis, a USMR with a maximum power of 100 W and a resonance frequency of 20 kHz was built. The strong and uniform sound field in the USMR was then applied to intensify gas–liquid mass transfer of slug flow in a microfluidic channel. Non-inertial cavitation with multiple surface wave oscillation was excited on the slug bubbles, enhancing the overall mass transfer coefficient by 3.3–5.7 times.