Design of Milli-Scale Flow Reactor Equipped with Additive Manufactured Static Mixer

Micro-reactor is an enabling technology that fulfills the requirements of small scale continuous production. Conventional static mixers cannot provide sufficient adequate mixing, mass transfer, and heat transfer at flow rates in the order of mL/min. Although there are various types of micro-reactor, and some of these reactors are on the millimeter scale, not all reactions require such degree of enhancement of mass transfer and heat transfer. Due to the fixed structure, the enhancement degree of mass transfer can only be adjusted by flow rate. All of the above factors restrict the application of flow chemistry from laboratory to production.

A series of milli-scale flow reactors equipped with static mixers manufactured by 3D printing was developed. The mixing performance of the reactors was evaluated in a wide flux range(40ml/min to 600ml/min). Mixing times in the reactors determined by Villermaux–Dushman method range from 0.03 s to 0.002 s. Flow fields in the reactors were evaluated with computational fluid dynamics and validated by particle image velocimetry. Proper milli-scale flow reactors can be selected to meet the demands of process intensification and provide a way for scale-up of flow chemistry.