Convective Mixing and Its Application to Micro Reactors

This work shows the application of convective fluid flow caused by flow-induced secondary vortices to fluidic single-phase micro mixers. As an example we used simple static T-shaped micro mixers. The convective flow was observed both by simulations and by experiments and is suitable for enhancing the mixing quality. Concerning micro reactors, it is necessary that the mixing is faster than the chemical reaction to be induced so that the creation of unwanted side products is minimized. The mixing model by Bourne is slightly modified for continuous flow reactors and applied to our mixers. Using this model, timescales for the mixing in our micro mixers are calculated. A first test reaction — the iodide-iodate reaction by Villermaux and Dushman — to check the validity of the timescales is outlined. These overall results will help to achieve a deeper understanding of micro reactors.