Effects of Microchannel Geometry and Inlet Conditions on Mixing Efficiency in a Passive T-Shaped Micromixer

In the present study, four types of mixing channels geometries in a passive T-mixer are investigated numerically to find the geometry effect on the mixing properties in a range of Reynolds numbers. Furthermore, the effects of inlet condition on the mixing efficiency are also studied. Therefore, fully developed and non-fully developed streams are applied at the inlets. The simple, converging, diverging and converging-diverging mixing channels are surveyed numerically. Mixing efficiency which is one of the important issue in mixing problem is probed numerically. The results show that for different conditions of the inlets, simple channel has minimum efficiency among the other channels. In addition, it is found that in higher Reynolds number, the converging-diverging channel has higher mixing efficiency than other channels. Moreover, when the inlets of the channels have non-fully developed conditions, the efficiency of the mixers are lower than the fully developed conditions.

Keywords:

Passive T-mixer , Mixing index , Mixing efficiency , CFD