Hydrodynamic studies of aqueous two-phase systems in millichannels

TL;DR

This study investigates the flow patterns and hydrodynamics of aqueous two-phase systems in millichannels, revealing flow regimes and parameters that could enable greener nanoparticle synthesis methods.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of flow regimes in ATPS within millichannels, including experimental and simulation data, expanding understanding beyond organic systems.

Findings

Flow patterns classified into slug, transition, and core-annular flows.

Flow regime maps are similar to those of organic systems.

Interfacial tension of 1.25x10^-4 N/m yields accurate slug size predictions.

Abstract

Liquid-liquid segmented flows in microchannels have been extensively investigated in the context of nanoparticle synthesis. The enhanced mixing in the slugs results in monodispersed particles. Earlier studies have focused on Organic-Aqueous Systems (OAS). The nanoparticles synthesized in the presence of organic solutions have limited applications. An alternative green route for the synthesis can be developed using an Aqueous Two-Phase System (ATPS). These systems are characterized by interfacial tensions, which are two orders of magnitude lower than typical organic aqueous systems. In this work, flow patterns and hydrodynamics of ATPS are investigated as a first step. Polyethylene glycol -trisodium citrate system was chosen as ATPS. The objective of this work is to see if any new physics arises in an ATPS system. The low interfacial tension results in high Capillary numbers (Ca >> 3) in a microfluidic system. Consequently, the flow observed here is parallel or core-annular. However, in a millichannel, the capillary number becomes lower (Ca << 1) for an ATPS system. In this work, experiments were carried out in a millichannel to span different flow patterns. The pattern formation was analyzed and classified into three categories, i.e., slug flow (interfacial tension dominated), transition flow, and core annular flow (inertia dominated). Flow regime maps based on the Reynolds number, Capillary number, and Weber number of each phase were found to be qualitatively similar to those of OAS. Simulations were performed for various interfacial tension values. An interfacial tension value of 1.25x10-4 N/m was found to yield slug sizes which fitted well with the experimental data. Film thickness was measured experimentally and with simulations compared favorably with the correlations available in the literature for OAS.