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液流动方向如何影响气体传输的全面理解，建立一种定量预测氧合器中气体传输的方法。因此，在三个主要流动方向上用血液在体外研究了在参数（例如i）纤维类型、ii）纤维角度和iii）纤维密度）上不同的小纤维段的气体传递。从这些测量，相关参数推导出，允许在未来的气体传输的通用，设备非特定的调查。此外，来自文献（Zhang等人）的宏观方法，该方法基于多孔介质模型，并利用方向相关参数进一步改进，以允许即使在复杂的氧合器纤维束几何形状中也能研究局部气体传输。基于这些发现，可以先验地研究新型中空纤维膜式氧合器中的气体转移，而不需要实验室原型制造。设计参数可以完全通过计算机进行优化，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.