Abstract A helical radial porous tube‐in‐tube microchannel mixer (HRP‐TMM) was studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) under steady, incompressible, and Newtonian flow conditions for a water–ethanol system over total flow rates of 20–100 mL/min. The proposed design combines a helical pore layout with radial pore orientation, which modifies secondary flow structures and thereby influences the mixing–pressure‐drop trade‐off. The effects of the ethanol‐to‐water flow rate ratio ( R f ), micropore diameter ( d 0 ), and helical pitch ( P ) on the mixing index ( MI ) and pressure drop (Δ p ) were examined. At a given total flow rate, increasing R f increases MI and decreases Δ p . Within the investigated range, the maximum MI reaches 91.44% at R f = 5, whereas the maximum Δ p remains at 1622 Pa at R f = 1. When the other parameters are fixed, d 0 = 0.4 mm yields higher MI over most tested flow rates and the lowest Δ p over the whole range, and p = 4 mm gives the highest MI at elevated flow rates while maintaining the lowest Δ p among the tested pitches. Overall, the present results provide practical guidance for the design and operation of porous tube‐in‐tube micromixers in chemical and process engineering applications.
Xu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.