Investigation of Mixing Performance by an Optical Micro-Rotor with Diffusion

Abstract

The researches on μ-TAS have been made in the medical and chemical fields. Since the Reynolds number is so small in this device that the effective mixing by turbulence does not occur. To increase the mixing performance, we plan to use the optical micro-rotor, which rotates by a laser beam, as a mixing device in μ-TAS. The performance of the rotor, located at the midst of Y-shaped micro channel, to mix two kinds of fluids is studied by CFD. Using marker particles with random walks, the partial mixture ratio is calculated in each block arranged on the outlet boundary of the channel. It is found that in order to mix the fluids with the highest degree, the ratio of the inlet speed and the rotor tip speed should be almost 0.2.