A Parametric Study of Fluid Mixing In T/y Micromixers

Micromixers are the essential components in integrated microfluidic system where fast chemical reactions dominate the application. Microfluidic devices offer an opportunity to study these fast competitive reactions in micro-scale dimensions. To understand the mixing characteristics of two liquid streams (reactants), we investigated the micromixing of the fluid streams in T/Y channels using computational fluid dynamics. The effects of various operating and design parameters on the flow dynamics and the quality of mixing were investigated qualitatively in order to optimize the mixing. The outer dimension of the micromixer was about few centimeters with mixing zone (reaction zone) about few millimeters in dimension. Using various geometric dimensions, we optimized the micromixer design where we used mixing efficiency as a determining factor. In this presentation, we will present fluid mixing characteristics of an optimized T/Y micromixer.