Development of a new micromixer based on split/recombination for mass production and its application to soap free emulsifier [An article from: Chemical Engineering Journal]

This digital document is a journal article from Chemical Engineering Journal, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
We fabricated two new types of multi-stage micromixers, YM-1 and YM-2. In these devices, mixing is achieved through the repeated splitting and recombination of the fluid flow. It was shown that the two types of micromixers presented here were capable to produce soap free emulsions at short contact times. From the investigation of the effects of the device wall material, the number of stages, etc. on the size of the droplets in the resulting emulsion, it was clarified that the emulsion was formed through efficient mixing achieved by utilizing the interactions which uniquely occur in microspaces, particularly between the device wall and fluid flow. The attained maximum production rates of emulsion in experiments were 5l/h for YM-1 and 20l/h for YM-2, respectively. To show the applicability of the mixers to other purposes, rapid extraction of phenol from dodecane by water was also conducted. It was found that YM-1 has a potential to continuously extract phenol even at extremely high flow rates (mixing times within 1s). These results show that, although the mixers are extremely small, they have the capability to be used in fairly large-scale industrial plants.