In application of micropumps to new fields in chemistry, biology, medical science and others, smaller sizes are supposed to be important rather than higher pump performance. In this study, considering from such a view point, micropumps using rotational and reciprocating motions of magnetic material balls were proposed and studied experimentally. The pump performance, i.e. the relation between flow rate and pump head are measured from liquid level changes in two containers connected to the inlet and outlet of the micropump. For the rotational motion micropump, while the maximum flow rate obtained, ~2 mL/min, is large enough as a micropump, the maximum pump head achieved, ~15 mm, is small even for a micropump. It is desirable to increase the pump head furthermore for this micropump. For the reciprocating motion micropump, the maximum flow rate obtained and the maximum pump head achieved are ~7.5 mL/min and ~625 mm, respectively. These values of the pump performance are sufficient as a micropump. Both the micropumps can be incorporated into microfluidic devices (tips) and can pump arbitrary kind of liquid.
Experiments and numerical analyses have been performed on micropumps/minipumps using rotational motion of magnetic material balls. In the pumps, magnetic material balls and nonmagnetic materials balls rotate in a closed channel loop, and a part of the balls acts as a piston and the remaining part of the balls serves as a valve. Experiments have been carried out on two pumps, i.e. a smaller pump and a larger pump with channel cross-sections of ∼1 mm and ∼2 mm inner diameter, respectively. The maximum flow rate achieved and the maximum pump head obtained are ∼500 μl/min and ∼70 Pa, respectively, for the smaller pump, and ∼2000 μl/min and ∼150 Pa, respectively, for the larger pump. Numerical analyses have been performed by dividing the pumping loop into a piston channel and a valve channel. The numerical analyses overestimate the flow rate obtained in the experiments, except for the region of larger pump heads in the larger pump.
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