Study of the effect of the microfluidic effect on reducing the reaction times

D.I. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, 125047, Moscow, Miusskaya Square, 9, Russia

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Published online: 5 February 2026

Abstract

This study investigated the possibility of generating cavitation effects in microfluidic reactors at sharp pressure drops (from 10 to 1 atm.) without the use of ultrasonic sources. The calculations revealed that with the parameters characteristic of microfluidic systems (channel diameter of 1 mm, flow rate of 100 ml/h), an energy dissipation rate of approximately 3.225 W/cm² was achieved. This value exceeds the known cavitation threshold for aqueous solutions and is within the interval characteristic of cavitation induced by high-frequency sources. A decrease in the diameter of the channel contributes to an increase in specific power, thereby increasing the probability of cavitation. The dependencies of the kinetics of the first-order reaction on the intensity of cavitation were determined. At α = 0.8 (cavitation amplification coefficient selected from the literature), the velocity constant increases from 0.010 to 0.0358 s^–1, which leads to a significant reduction in the time required to achieve a given degree of transformation.