(140g) Microfluidic Networks for Complex Emulsions : from Single Active Elements to Highly Parallelised Systems

Microfluidics systems have been demonstrated to allow precision control over engineered of complex particulate at micron length scale. Examples include complex (multilayered) encapsulates with precise drop-in-drop structure for protection and controlled release of actives. For many of Unilever's foods and HPC products, this precision control is important for desired product properties including both sensorial and functional. A challenge remains to produce in enough sample quantity to characterise. One way to produce these quantities is to parallelise microfluidic channels. An important step to understand how to parallelise microfluidics devices to form highly controlled micro structures is to fully comprehend the behaviour of a single microdevice and the manifold characteristics when running several microdevices in parallel. A bench scale rig prototype was designed and built in-house for the purpose to investigate the numbering up of microfluidics devices. This manifold rig is able to fully characterise and/or control the process conditions of this systems (e.g. pressure, droplet size, flowrate), which includes micro pressure sensors, optical sensors and accurate feeding system. We measured the resistances for each microdevice for both phases, and correlated the data with the existing models, for both Newtonian and Non-Newtonian liquids. Further investigation was carried out to understand the behaviour of running microdevices in parallel. The validation of existing models was achieved. Scale Up rules have been derived by quantifying the process parameters, fluid characteristics, and microdevice geometry, dimension & tolerances. Bench-top systems have been designed using the knowledge of the manifold rig to demonstrate the feasibility of a simple micro-fluidic emulsifier utilising massive parallelism. The demonstrator will be capable of producing samples of dispersion assemblies such as o/w and/or w/o emulsions with controlled dispersity. Results of the demonstrator will be shown in the conference.