Demonstration of the Enhanced Mixing and Reaction Ability of an Alternate Pumping Microreactor With Visualization of the Mixing Field and the Reaction Field

In order to enhance the mixing and reaction capabilities of micromixers and microreactors, we had proposed a novel system termed alternate pumping microreactor (APMR) and had demonstrated that the APMR could generate a thin-layered structure under a particular pumping condition. This flow pattern should enhance the abovementioned capabilities. In this paper, we visualized the dilution process of methylene blue solution with water in the APMR and established a method to obtained the concentration field from the captured image according to the relation between the methylene blue concentration and the saturation of the captured color. To assess the reaction field, visualization of the reaction of ferrous sulphate and potassium thiocyanate was adopted. These visualization results suggested that the APMR enhanced the mixing and reacting capabilities and the time and channel length required for the reaction to complete were two order orders of magnitude lesser than those in the case of the ordinary reactor.