CFD modeling of an ultrasonic separator for the removal of lipid particles from pericardial suction blood

Giuliana Trippa, Yiannis Ventikos, David P. Taggart, Constantin C. Coussios

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is presented to simulate the removal of lipid particles from blood using a novel ultrasonic quarter-wavelength separator. The LagrangianEulerian CFD model accounts for conservation of mass and momentum, for the presence of lipid particles of a range of diameters, for the acoustic force as experienced by the particles in the blood, as well as for gravity and other particlefluid interaction forces. In the separator, the liquid flows radially inward within a fluid chamber formed between a disc-shaped transducer and a disc-shaped reflector. Following separation of the lipid particles, blood exits the separator axially through a central opening on the disc-shaped reflector. Separator diameters studied varied between 12 and 18 cm, and gap sizes between the discs of 600 μm, 800 μm and 1 μmm were considered. Results show a strong effect of residence time of the particles within the chamber on the separation performance. Different separator configurations were identified, which could give a lipid removal performance of 95 or higher when processing 62.5 cm3/min of blood. The developed model provides a design method for the selection of geometric and operating parameters for the ultrasonic separator.

Original languageEnglish
Article number5530362
Pages (from-to)282-290
Number of pages9
JournalIEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
Volume58
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
  • lipid particles
  • radial flow
  • separation performance
  • ultrasonic separator

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