Experimental Investigation of Two-Phase Immiscible Liquid Flow Through a Microchannel

Abstract

Two-phase flow is getting more and more applicable as component sizes in mechanical systems are miniaturized. The applications of two-phase microfluidic devices include energy conversions, chemical synthesis, and thermal management. Hence, the two-phase flow largely determines the functionality and performance of these devices. Immiscible two-phase liquid flow in microchannels has a wide area of applications such as extraction processes, emulsion production and other biochemical applications. Therefore, modern researchers are trying to study the flow dynamics of two-phase flow and its effect on microscale devices. In this work, experimental studies are done for flow visualization and determining flow patterns of the two immiscible liquids flowing through the microchannel using the inverted microscope, and the images are captured with a high-speed camera. The microchannel has a square cross-section with an area of 100 × 100 µm² with two inlets and one common outlet. The liquids are passed through the T-shaped microchannel through their respective inlets. De-ionized water and silicone oil are selected as the working fluids for the experiment. Experiments are conducted for the different combinations of the flow rate of the fluids. The images are captured along the flow length at various locations to analyze the flow patterns inside the channel. The background noise of the captured images is removed by the postprocessing method. The processed images are analyzed using the Phantom Camera Application software to obtain the stratified length, bubble length, and bubble velocity of the flow regimes.