Numerical simulation techniques for the efficient and accurate treatment of local fluidic transport processes together with chemical reactions

Abstract

This work describes a numerical framework developed for the efficient and accurate simulation of microfluidic applications related to two leading ex-periments of the DFG SPP 1740 research initiative, namely the ‘Superfocus Mi-cromixer’ and the ‘Taylor bubble flow’. Both of these basic experiments are con-sidered in a reactive framework using the SPP 1740 specific chemical reaction systems. A description of the utilized numerical components related to special meshing techniques, discretization methods and decoupling solver strategies is provided and its particular implementation is performed in the open-source CFD package FeatFlow [19]. A demonstration of the developed simulation tool is based on already defined validation cases and on suitable examples being re-sponsible for the determination of the related convergence properties (in the range of targeted process parameter values) of the developed numerical frame-work. The subsequent studies give an insight into a parameter estimation method with the aim of determination of unknown reaction-kinetic parameter values by the help of experimentally measured data.