Two-phase analysis of blood in microchannel architecture on plasma separation ability with dimensional variance

Purpose

This paper aims to study the effects of varying inlet channel angle in a novel microfluidic architecture blood plasma separation ability over range of hematocrit values (5–45%) at multiple flowrates.

Design/methodology/approach

CAD designs for both micro architectures were designed in SOILWORKS. In the second step, these designs were imported into ANSYS to perform where meshing, model selection, defining blood as two-phase material and boundary conditions are performed.

Findings

Separation efficiency values close to 100% with diluted blood and 65.2% with whole blood were observed. Straight channel inlet design has significantly better performance at high hematocrit levels, whereas at lower hematocrit levels, both designs had almost same outcome. Furthermore, lower flowrates have shown the highest separation efficiency for lower hematocrit levels, whereas at higher hematocrit percentages, higher flowrates have shown better separation effects for both designs. Furthermore, trends obtained for flow ratio and flowrates against separation efficiency are demonstrated.

Research limitations/implications

This study is based on blood modeled as two-phase flow, with the phases consisting of blood plasma as primary phase and red blood cells as secondary particulate phase.

Practical implications

Implications of this study are far reaching for point-of-care health-care systems. A practical system of this numerical study can provide a microchannel device which take very small amount of blood sample to separate it into constituents which can be coupled with detection module to detect a particular disease for which it is designed for. This microsystem can be very beneficial for remote areas where a large hospital facility is far away.

Originality/value

This study has carried out a detailed analysis on the ability of a novel microchannel architecture to separate blood plasma from other blood constituents. Inlet channel angle variation effects are observed over a range of hematocrit percentages. These trends are further investigated for three different flowrates to assess the microchannel design behavior.