A 3D-printed flow distributor with uniform flow rate control for multi-stacked microfluidic systems

In the scale-up of chemical production in a microfluidic system, it is challenging to prevent flow maldistribution from a single inlet into stacked multiple microchannel exits. In the present study, a compact flow distributor equipped with a fluidic damper is developed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) along with experimental validation. A microfluidic flow distributor, which is equipped with an optimized fluidic damper and consists of 25 exit channels, is fabricated as an integrated body using a digital light processing (DLP) type 3D printer. The 3D printed flow distributor with a CFD-optimized fluidic damper is found to achieve a low maldistribution factor (MF) of 2.2% for the average flow rate over 25 exit channels while inducing only a minor increment (<6%) in the pressure drop. A generalized manual is proposed for the design of optimal flow distributors with different scale-up dimensions. Using the manual, an optimal flow distributor with 625 stacked microchannels with a MF of only 1.2% is successfully designed. It is expected that the design manual and the rapid printing platform will allow the efficient development of multi-channel stacked micro-devices such as those in drug delivery and energy conversion systems where equidistribution of fluid flow is highly demanded.