DEVELOPMENT OF MICROSEPARATOR WITH DAUGHTER CHANNELS FOR LIQUID-LIQUID TWO PHASE SEPARATION USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

This research aims to investigate the dependence of liquid-liquid phase separation performance in microseparators on the influence of geometrical parameters of daughter channels. Existing microseparators use “comb” geometry for separation that is susceptible to high pressure drop due to its extremely miniaturized dimension. In this research, the performance of liquid-liquid phase separation in microseparators was investigated via computational fluid dynamics approach using three different configurations of microseparators, where daughter channels were employed for separation instead of the “comb” design. The performance of the phase separation was characterized by the purity of oil obtained at the main channel outlet (MC_Outlet) and secondary channel outlet regions (SC_Outlet), where high purity of oil in the SC_Outlet region and low purity of oil in the MC_Outlet region are desired.