Comparative analysis of mixing performance and pressure loss of three types of passive micromixers

Effective mixing of microfluids is the basic requirement for biochemical analysis. The alteration of internal structure and shape of microchannel can increase the interfacial surface areas and then improve the mixing performance. Three types of micromixers with different structures were investigated with numerical simulation. Meanwhile, the mixing performance of 3 types of passive micromixers was compared. Consequently, the pressure loss of the micromixers was studied. The results shows that the mixing performance of the internal-rib micromixers surpasses the other two types of micromixers under 5 different inlet velocity conditions. The pressure loss of the micromixer gradually increases with the flux growth. The pressure loss of internal-rib micromixer is the largest, Z-shaped micromixer takes the second places and Y-shaped micromixer is the least. In particular, when Q is 288 mLh^-1, the pressure loss of micromixer is large, which is not conducive to the integration of microfluidic chips. However, When Q = 28.8 mL^h-1, the internal-rib micromixer with a high mixing efficiency and low pressure loss is able to meet the requirement of microfluidic chips.