Micromixing of non-Newtonian fluids

This study examines the micromixing of non-Newtonian fluids through a constriction within a T-shaped microchannel. Previous micro-mixers have been focused mostly on Newtonian fluids, however, many chemical and biologic fluids exhibit non-Newtonian properties. As the use of microfluidic devices to handle fluids for various chemical and biomedical applications increases, the need for micromixer that can handle non-Newtonian fluids is growing. The flow within microchannels is essentially laminar, due to their small size, leading to long mixing times induced by slow molecular diffusion. This study demonstrates that a constriction microchannel can be used to accelerate mixing by employing the fluid rheology-induced flow instability. Specifically, we investigate the micromixing of shear-thinning fluids as well as the micromixing of shear-thinning fluid with water in flows with a range of Reynolds numbers.