Two-step numerical approach to predict ferrofluid droplet generation and manipulation inside multilaminar flow chambers

Gómez-Pastora, Jenifer; Amiri Roodan, Venoos; Karampelas, Ioannis H.; Alorabi, Ali Q.; Tarn, Mark D.; Iles, Alexander; Bringas, Eugenio; Paunov, Vesselin N.; Pamme, Nicole; Furlani, Edward P.; Ortiz, Inmaculada

Abstract

Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics approach is implemented to investigate the dynamic behavior of continuous-flow droplet microfluidics. The developed approach predicts both droplet generation and manipulation in a two-step process. First, droplet formation was studied in a flow-focusing junction through an Eulerian-Eulerian approach. Surface tension and wall adhesion were used in the model. The effect of flow rates and geometrical characteristics of the device on droplet size and dispensing rate was investigated. Second, post-generation, droplets were treated as point-like particles, and their deflection across a millimeter, multilaminar flow chamber with five parallel streams was modeled using an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, thus improving computational efficiency. Flow rates and magnet location were optimized. Our simulated droplet trajectory inside the chamber was contrasted against experimental data, and a good agreement was found between them. This two-step computational model enables the rational optimization of continuous-flow droplet processing, and it can be readily adapted to a broad range of magnetically enabled microfluidic applications.

Citation

Gómez-Pastora, J., Amiri Roodan, V., Karampelas, I. H., Alorabi, A. Q., Tarn, M. D., Iles, A., Bringas, E., Paunov, V. N., Pamme, N., Furlani, E. P., & Ortiz, I. (2019). Two-step numerical approach to predict ferrofluid droplet generation and manipulation inside multilaminar flow chambers. Journal of physical chemistry. C, 123(15), 10065-10080. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01393

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 28, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Apr 1, 2019
• Publication Date: Apr 18, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 13, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 2, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Physical Chemistry C
• Print ISSN: 1932-7447
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 123
• Issue: 15
• Pages: 10065-10080
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01393
• Keywords: General Energy; Physical and Theoretical Chemistry; Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials; Surfaces, Coatings and Films
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1593502
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01393
• Contract Date: Jun 13, 2019