Oxygen transfer characteristics of a hollow fiber dialyser: toward possible repurposing of dialysers as blood oxygenators in the context of constrained availability of respiratory support

David M Rubin; Neil T Stacey; Tonderayi Matambo; Diane Hildebrandt

Of all the flow rates, the lowest is the most likely to result in equilibrium and in this case it does not. This is probably due to poor mixing due to laminar flow at this low flow rate, however loss of oxygen due to an inadequate seal cannot be excluded. As our severe constraints on time and resources made it impossible to repeat these experiments and make multiple measurements as would normally be done, we cannot address this definitively. Now that we have a minimum oxygen transfer rate for the 500 ml/min water flow rate of 14.6 mg/min, the next step is to use equation [2] to estimate the oxygen mass transfer area coe cient, kA. Doing so will allow us to estimate the actual mass transfer rates for blood rather than water. Blood will be very di erent as it contains haemoglobin which takes up the vast bulk of the transferred oxygen and consequently the change in dissolved oxygen concentration remains very modest and may even be treated as negligible.