Journal
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
Volume 326, Issue -, Pages 765-773Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2017.06.028
Keywords
Microfluidics; Microreactors; Scale-up; Factory-on-chip; Continuous synthesis
Categories
Funding
- National Basic Research Program of China [2014CB748500]
- Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality [16DZ2260600]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [222201717012, 222201718005]
- Global Innovation Initiatives Award [S-ECAGD-13-CA-149 (DT)]
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Droplet microfluidics provide an advanced platform for functional material synthesis. However, the process has been largely limited to the scale of laboratory study with the device known as lab-on-chip. Here, a multi-dimensional scale-up strategy based on modularised microfluidic reactors is presented to develop large-scale devices defined as factory-on-chip, achieving throughput enhancement to the industrial production scale. Under the guidance of the derived principle, an up-scaling system is demonstrated with eight microchannels parallelized to form an array, ten arrays stacked as the module, and five modules integrated in a system with 400 channels in total. Experiments showed that the circular array arrangement improved the uniformity of product droplets by 42.4% compared to that achieved with a parallel array. The stacking effect was also investigated with two types of material production systems. Chitosan/ TiO2 composite microspheres, as advanced wastewater treatment material, were continuously synthesized in mass production with a narrow size distribution of 3.59%, which could hardly be achieved with conventional methods. The material exhibited a methyl-orange dye removal efficiency of 65.3%, which constitutes an improvement of 10.8% compared to single-component chitosan microspheres. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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