Respiratory distress syndrome is a major cause of mortality among infants. Current therapies are limited in terms of invasiveness, cost, infrastructure, and leads to long term morbidities such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia. As a result a form of respiratory support termed as “artificial placenta” has been developed that allows natural development of lungs and avoids long term morbidities. The artificial placenta is connected via the umbilical vessels and provide pumpless respiratory support and is characterized by non-invasiveness, low cost and low infrastructure. Our group previously reported on a development of porous PDMS membrane artificial placenta. To build upon its development, one of the objectives of this thesis was to reduce the variation in the oxygen saturation of the input blood for testing the oxygenator. Another objective was to setup a mathematical model to predict the oxygen uptake in an oxygenating unit and use the model to optimize the geometric parameters of a design. The final objective was to improve the oxygen uptake of the oxygenating unit of the artificial placenta by redesigning the blood flow path and the membrane material.
The experimental setup was improved to employ an active controller that actively maintained the oxygen saturation of the input blood for testing the oxygenator within a variation of ±3% of the set point for at least an hour. As compared to previous experimental setup the blood deviated from the set point by 9%.
Later, the blood flow path in the oxygenator was redesigned from a flat height profile to a sloping height profile; and the PDMS membrane was reinforced with a thin steel mesh. Such changes improved the oxygen uptake at the operating pressure of 30 mmHg from 16 µL/min in case of an oxygenator with flat height profile and PDMS membrane to 26 µL/min in case of an oxygenator with flat profile and composite membrane.
Finally, a mathematical model was developed that coupled oxygen uptake, pressure drop and membrane expansion. The model was validated against experimental results and was later used to optimize the configuration of the oxygenator with sloping profile and composite membrane. The predicted oxygen uptake of the optimized configuration at the operating pressure of 30 mmHg was 78.8 µL/min. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/19498 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Matharoo, Harpreet |
| Contributors | Selvaganapathy, Ponnambalam, Mechanical Engineering |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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