Real-Time Monitoring of Chemical Processing in Microfluidic reactors

Proposed Flow Sheet

Microdimension of microfluidic tools provides different advantages that could be summarized as

follows

1) consumption of small quantity of reagents normally 102 to 103 times less than conventional
methods thus addressing safety (anticancer drugs, biological and radioactive) and economic issues;

2) improved mass and heat transfer due large surface;

3) provides precise control over flow, i.e. laminar flow due to small Reynolds number where
viscous forces are dominant;

4) continuous flow operations;

5) reduces mixing time;

6) low power consumption;

7) rapidly produces libraries of different materials by changing composition and fluid phase flow
rate;

8) production of particles where coefficient of variation is less than 5% and high encapsulation
efficiency;
9) miniaturization allows portability and on spot analysis due integration and low power
consumption;

10) parallelization on microfluidic chips allows high throughput and multiple analysis at a time;

11) faster analysis and quick response due to shorter diffusion distances and

12) allows rapid screening of nanoparticles during different phases of clinical development (Khan
et al., 2013b; Serra et al., 2013; Tian and Finehout, 2009; Valencia et al., 2012).

Apart from advantages it has certain disadvantages for e.g. it’s a new technology and not fully
understood yet. Dominance of surface forces (surface tension, electrical, van der Waals, and
surface roughness) at micro scale makes certain reactions more complex than macroscale. In
microfluidics as signal drop is generated at time, so emulsification is time taking process and per
hour production is low. Although several attempts are made by different group to overcome this
problem by parallelization of channels on same chip (Serra et al., 2013).