Micro-scale thermo-fluidic transport in two immiscible liquid layers subject to combined electroosmotic and pressure-driven transport

A theoretical analysis is presented for fully developed convective heat transfer in two immiscible fluid layers confined within parallel plate microchannels subject to combined effects of axial pressure gradients and imposed electrical fields. Assuming desperate zeta potentials at the interfaces thus formed, closed-form expressions are derived for the velocity and temperature distributions under fully developed conditions, with uniform wall heat flux boundary conditions. For the heat transfer analysis, the viscous dissipation effects are neglected as compared to the joule heating effects. Results are subsequently obtained for different ranges of the ratios of various electrical properties of the two fluid layers and various relative strengths of the ratios of the electrical fields and the imposed pressure gradients. These results demonstrate the effects of the applied electric fields and pressure gradients, presence of external heat source or sink and interfacial positions on the temperature distributions in the two layers and the corresponding Nusselt numbers. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.