EFFECT OF BAFFLE GEOMETRY ON MIXING PERFORMANCE IN THE PASSIVE MICROMIXERS

Abstract

Micro and nano-fluidic mixing nowadays is a very important area in research due to itscrucial role in new technologies and applications such as biomedical and biochemical synthesis.Due to the low velocities associated with microscale flow, it is often very difficult to mix fluids ina rapid and homogeneous manner. One of the methods of enhancing fluid mixing is to obstruct thefluid flow using vanes or panels known as baffles. In this paper, a Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) approach is used to study the effect of baffles on the mixing performance in a passivemicromixer. The numerical method is verified by comparing its obtained results with experimentsand numerical results published earlier. Rectangular, semi-circular and triangular baffles havebeen considered for investigating the effects of baffle geometry on mixing performance.Furthermore, the effects of channel inlet angle and baffles offset in mixing performance arestudied. As the results show, there is a two-fold increase in mixing performance in the baffledcases as opposed to the simple case.