Simulation and experiment of recycle micromixer with high reflux

To overcome the low mixing efficiency near the vicinity of the wall of the micromixer, a passive micromixer using the recycle flow, with the advantages of simple structure, high reflux rate and high mixing efficiency, has been designed and investigated. In this work, the influence of different structural parameters and fluid properties on the mixing performance was studied by using commercial software ANSYS CFX. The mixing effect of micromixer was also studied by the experiments. A full comparison between the experimental results and simulation results was carried out. The numerical simulation results show that as the jet intensity increases and the viscosity of fluid becomes lower, the reflux rate and mixing efficiency of the micromixer are improved continuously; when Reynolds number (Re) is >15, the maximum reflux rate of the micromixer and the mixing efficiency exceed 35 and 95%. In addition, it was also observed that the simulation results are consistent with the experiments which revealed that the numerical simulation method applied and the results obtained in this work are reliable.