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全面理解，建立一种定量预测氧合器内气体传递的方法。因此，我们在体外以血液为主要流动方向，研究了纤维类型、纤维角度和纤维密度等参数不同的细小纤维段的气体传递。通过这些测量，得出了相关参数，从而允许在未来对气体传输进行普遍的、不特定于设备的研究。此外，来自文献(Zhang等人)的基于多孔介质模型的宏观方法被实现，并通过方向关联参数进行了进一步改进，以允许即使在复杂的氧合器纤维束几何形状中也允许研究局部气体传输。基于这些发现，可以先验地研究新型中空纤维膜氧合器中的气体传递，而不需要制造实验室样机。设计参数完全可以在硅胶中进行优化，这将大大缩短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.