CFD-based Design of Laminated Microdevice with 3D Serpentine Channel for Submillisecond Mixing

In chemical synthesis, competition often occurs between reactions of intermediates. The main operation that affects reaction results is mixing, and the control of the mixing time is important. The laminated micromixer with three-dimensional (3D) serpentine channel can achieve residence time in the submillisecond range, allowing control of intramolecular rearrangements not possible with conventional mixers. However, the channel design of this type of mixer is important because the pressure drop increases as the number of bends in the channel increases. In this study, various channel configurations, shapes and sizes were designed, and their mixing performance was evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. As a result, a microdevice consisting of a non-alignment confluence section and a mixing channel with two serpentine sections was designed as a laminated mixer. It was shown that the designed microdevice exhibited the mixing performance equivalent to the conventional microdevice for various inlet flowrate ratios and had lower pressure drop than the conventional microdevice. Additionally, the usefulness of the designed microdevice was confirmed through experiments on the anionic Fries rearrangement.