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

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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.