Oxygen mass transfer in a gas/membrane/liquid system surrogate of membrane blood oxygenators

Oxygen mass transfer in a membrane blood oxygenator (MBO) surrogate system has been addressed in this work. It consists of a slit for water circulation as a surrogate blood flow channel and a constant pressure oxygen chamber separated by an integral asymmetric hemocompatible polyurethane-based membrane. The oxygenated stream enters a well-mixed reservoir of constant volume, V, for the oxygen average concentration, (Formula presented.), measurement as a function of time, t. In a range of short times, the linearity of (Formula presented.) vs. t allows the direct determination of the permeation fluxes (Formula presented.), with no recourse to dimensionless correlations for the determination of mass-transfer coefficients. The experimental fluxes are in very good agreement with the predictions based in unidimensional axial convection and unidimensional transversal diffusion. This custom-made benchmark system allows the optimization of the flow and oxygen mass transfer for the design of a novel flat-sheet MBO.