(585z) Liquid-Liquid Extraction in Stratified Flow in a Wavy-Wall Microchannel

A theoretical investigation of liquid-liquid extraction in stratified flows in a wavy-wall microchannel is carried out in this work. Several studies in the past have focused on heat transfer augmentation in single phase and two-phase fluid flow in a wavy-wall microchannel. This work focuses on the improvement in extraction in a wavy-wall microchannel. This is studied for two flow configurations i.e. flow (i) parallel to corrugations and (ii) perpendicular to the corrugations. A semi-analytical solution approach is used in which the velocity profile is obtained using a domain perturbation method. The species transport equations are solved using method of lines (MOL) for flow parallel to the corrugations whereas for flow perpendicular to the corrugations, an operator splitting technique is used. CFD simulation are also carried out considering the exact boundary using Fluent 16.1 to verify the approximate solution obtained by the perturbation method of the mathematical model. The improvement in liquid-liquid extraction in a wavy-wall microchannel is analysed by comparing the performance with the extraction found in a smooth wall microchannel at same flow-rates. Our study shows that a significant improvement in extraction is possible in a wavy-wall microchannel for flow perpendicular to the corrugations.