Fundamental Investigation of Gas Transfer as a Function of Membrane Fiber Geometry and Blood Flow Direction in Oxygengators

本项目的目的是通过提高对纤维束几何形状和血流方向如何影响气体传递的整体认识，建立一种定量预测氧合器中气体传递的方法。因此，在体外研究了不同参数(i)纤维类型，ii)纤维角度，iii)纤维密度的小纤维段的气体传递，血液在三个主要流动方向。从这些测量中，推导出相关参数，以便将来对气体传输进行通用的、设备非特定的研究。此外，文献（Zhang等人）中基于多孔介质模型的宏观方法得以实现，并进一步改进了定向相关参数，以便在复杂的氧合器纤维束几何形状中也能研究局部气体传递。基于这些发现，新型中空纤维膜氧合器中的气体传递可以在不需要实验室原型制造的情况下进行先验研究。设计参数可以在纯硅中进行优化，这将大大减少未来新型氧合器的开发时间。

Aim of this project is to establish a method for a quantitative predicting of gas transfer in oxygenators by improving the overall understanding for how fiber bundle geometry and blood flow direction affect the gas transfer. Therefore the gas transfer of small fiber segments that differ in parameters such as i) fiber type, ii) fiber angle, and iii) fiber density are investigated in-vitro with blood in the three main flow directions. From these measurements, correlation parameters are derived that allow a universal, device-unspecific investigation of gas transfer in the future. Furthermore, a macroscopic approach from literature (Zhang et al.), which is based on porous media models, is implemented and further improved with directional correlation parameters to allow for an investigation of local gas transfer even in complex oxygenator fiber bundle geometries. Based on these findings, the gas transfer in novel hollow fiber membrane oxygenators can be investigated a priori without the need for lab prototype manufacturing. Design parameters can be optimized purely in silico, which will result in a dramatic reduction in development time of novel oxygenators in the future.