A Three-Step Scenario Involved in Particle Capture on a Pore Edge

Paul Duru (1) , Yannick Hallez (2)

1 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse
2 LGC - Laboratoire de Génie Chimique

A scenario is proposed to describe the capture of a spherical particle around a cylindrical pore. This geometry, “ideal” as far as the problem of particle capture on a filtration membrane is concerned, is clearly relevant in view of the pore-scale geometry of nucleopore or microsieve filtration membranes, and also of some microfluidic systems used to perform fluid−particle separation. The present scenario consists of three successive steps: particle deposition on the membrane away from the pore, subsequent reentrainment of some of the deposited particles by rolling on the membrane surface, and final arrest by a stabilizing van der Waals torque when the particle rolls over the pore edge. A modeling of these three steps requires the hydrodynamic and physicochemical particle−membrane interactions to be detailed close to the singular pore edge region and raises questions concerning the role of particle surface roughness. The relevance and robustness of such of a scenario for rough micrometer-sized latex particles is emphasized and comparisons are made with existing experimental data.

Mots clés: Particle; Capture; Microsieve; Pore membrane; Hydrodynamic; Surface; Interactions

Domaines: Génie chimique; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Paul Duru, Yannick Hallez. A Three-Step Scenario Involved in Particle Capture on a Pore Edge. Langmuir, 2015, vol. 31 (n° 30), pp. 8310-8317. ⟨10.1021/acs.langmuir.5b01298⟩. ⟨hal-01223261⟩