Tracking reactions in microflow

Continuous flow microfluidic mixers are a powerful tool for investigating reaction kinetics. However, dispersion of flow speeds and convolution of mixing kinetics and reaction kinetics often limit the temporal resolution. Here, we introduce a method to determine the reaction time for each location of a mixer to analyze dispersion effects. Our approach is based on calculating individual streamlines and following the reaction along them. The results show that varying the flow speed of liquids in the mixer offers a simple way to distinguish the mixing kinetics from the reaction kinetics.