Journal
LAB ON A CHIP
Volume 18, Issue 8, Pages 1250-1258Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c8lc00004b
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Funding
- Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE) of the Republic of Korea [20161110100230]
- Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP)
- National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) - Korea government (MSIP) [NRF-2017R1A3B1023598, 2008-0061983]
- Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) [20161110100230] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
- National Research Foundation of Korea [2008-0061983, 2017R1A3B1023598] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
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In the scale-up of chemical production in a microfluidic system, it is challenging to prevent flow maldistribution from a single inlet into stacked multiple microchannel exits. In the present study, a compact flow distributor equipped with a fluidic damper is developed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) along with experimental validation. A microfluidic flow distributor, which is equipped with an optimized fluidic damper and consists of 25 exit channels, is fabricated as an integrated body using a digital light processing (DLP) type 3D printer. The 3D printed flow distributor with a CFD-optimized fluidic damper is found to achieve a low maldistribution factor (MF) of 2.2% for the average flow rate over 25 exit channels while inducing only a minor increment (<6%) in the pressure drop. A generalized manual is proposed for the design of optimal flow distributors with different scale-up dimensions. Using the manual, an optimal flow distributor with 625 stacked microchannels with a MF of only 1.2% is successfully designed. It is expected that the design manual and the rapid printing platform will allow the efficient development of multi-channel stacked micro-devices such as those in drug delivery and energy conversion systems where equidistribution of fluid flow is highly demanded.
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