A Study on the Effect of Flow Unsteadiness on the Yield of a Chemical Reaction in a T Micro-Reactor

• Main Authors: Alessandro Mariotti, Matteo Antognoli, Chiara Galletti, Roberto Mauri, Maria Vittoria Salvetti, Elisabetta Brunazzi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Micromachines
• Subjects: T-shaped micro-mixer; unsteady flow regimes; mixing degree; reaction yield; experiments and numerical simulations
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/12/3/242

Despite the very simple geometry and the laminar flow, T-shaped microreactors have been found to be characterized by different and complex steady and unsteady flow regimes, depending on the Reynolds number. In particular, flow unsteadiness modifies strongly the mixing process; however, little is known on how this change may affect the yield of a chemical reaction. In the present work, experiments and 3-dimensional numerical simulations are carried out jointly to analyze mixing and reaction in a T-shaped microreactor with the ultimate goal to investigate how flow unsteadiness affects the reaction yield. The onset of the unsteady asymmetric regime enhances the reaction yield by more than <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mn>30</mn><mo>%</mo></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula>; however, a strong decrease of the yield back to values typical of the vortex regime is observed when the flow undergoes a transition to the unsteady symmetric regime.