Transverse mixing enhancement due to bacterial random motility in porous microfluidic devices

Bacterial swimming in groundwater may create flow disturbances in the surrounding microenvironment thereby enhancing contaminant mixing. Porous microfluidic devices (MFDs) were fabricated in three different pore geometry designs: uniform grain size with large pore throats (MFD-I), nonuniform grain size with restricted pore space (MFD-II), and uniform grain size with small pore throats (MFD-III). Escherichia coli HCB33 was used to assess the effect of bacterial random motility on transverse mixing of a tracer, fluorescent labeled dextran, under three experimental conditions in which motile bacteria, nonmotile bacteria, and plain buffer suspensions were flown through the MFDs at four different flow rates. Mixing was quantified in terms of the best-fit effective transverse dispersion coefficient ((D(cy))(eff)). A mixing enhancement index (MEI) was defined as the ratio of the (D(cy))(eff) of tracer in experiments with motile bacteria and without bacteria. Motile bacteria caused a maximum 5-6 fold increase in MEI in MFD-II, a nearly 4-fold increase in MFD-I, and very little observed change in MFD-III. The apparent transverse dispersivities (α(app)) of MFD-II and MFD-I increased by 3 and 2.3 times, respectively, with no change in MFD-III. These observations indicate that both pore throat size and pore arrangement are critical factors for contaminant mixing in porous media.