Chaotic Mixing in a Twisted Pipe: Optimisation of Heat, Mass Transfer and RTD

It is now well-known that chaotic advection in laminar flow significantly impacts scalar transport - heat, mass and residence time distribution (RTD). In context of twisted pipes, such phenomena are relevant to a wide range of applications which demand rapid heat and mass transport ranging from microfluidics and continuous chemical processing to bioreactors. A general theoretical framework linking the three modes of transport was described and applied to optimise the performance of a twisted pipe in terms of mixing, heat transfer and ability to produce a narrow RTD. The work indicates that it is possible to optimise all three aspects of the twisted pipe in a single analysis.