Researchers from Australia’s Flinders University have developed a vortex fluidic device (VFD) for mixing immiscible liquids — otherwise known as liquids that are incapable of mixing.

According to its developers, the rapid fluidic flow technique could have applications for industrial processes including food processing, nutraceuticals, cosmetics and drug delivery.

Considering that the mixing of immiscible liquids is significantly important to components of process engineering while also requiring the use of considerable energy and waste products, the developers believe their technique, which uses a common solvent and water, can avoid using other substances for creating immiscible fluids, thereby enabling a cleaner and greener process.

“Using thin-film microfluidics in combination with high shear flow chemistry and high heat and mass transfer, the rapidly evolving VFD technology is overcoming the mixing limitations of traditional batch processing,” said co-author Matt Jellicoe, from the Flinders Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

The researchers performed more than 100,000 experiments to determine how liquids mixed using the VFD as well as their flow behaviors at the nanometer.

In other experiments, the VFD was used to create drug elements such as peptides, improved fish oil and food products, and other green chemical processes.

The article, Vortex fluidic induced mass transfer across immiscible phases, appears in the journal Chemical Science.