Thermal Analysis for Velocity,Kinetics, and Enthalpy Reaction Measurements in Microfluidic Devices

Abstract

The aim of this work is to present new devices for the measurement of velocity, kinetics, and enthalpy of chemical reactions occurring in a microfluidic chip, co-flow, or droplets flow. The thermal analysis goes from the macroscopic approach by microcalorimetry to microscopic analysis inside the microchannel by IR thermography. Concerning microcalorimetry, the enthalpy is deduced from the measurement of the global heat flux dissipated by the chemical reaction as a function of the molar flow rate. A validation is presented on a well-known acid-base reaction. This device can be combined with an IR camera for local characterization. The processing of the measured temperature fields allows the estimation of properties of great importance for chemical engineers, such as heating source distribution (i.e., the kinetics) of the chemical reaction along the channel. A validation experiment of a temperature field processing method is proposed with the Joule effect. From such a previous experiment, a Peclet field is estimated and used in a further step in order to study an acid-base co-flow configuration. Finally, a first tentative of thermal characterization inside droplets flow during an acid-base chemical reaction is also presented.