A lattice Boltzmann study of reactive microflows

The role of geometrical micro-barriers for the conversion efficiency of reactive flows in narrow three-dimensional channels of millimetric size is investigated. Using a lattice Boltzmann-Lax-Wendroff code, we show that micro-barriers have an appreciable effect on the effective reaction efficiency of the device. If extrapolated to macroscopic scales, these effects can result in a sizeable increase of the overall reaction efficiency.