Characterization of microfluidic hollow fibre for urea separation

Abstract

A microfluidic device with a hollow fibre membrane is presented in this research paper. The device was fabricated using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and tested by performing measurement using syringe pump and characterization using Zetasizer in order to determine the overall mass transfer coefficient, KO. The urea concentration was varied at four different concentrations of 60, 90, 120 and 150 mM accordingly due to the range of pathophysiology. From the measurement and Debye plot graph and formulas, it was observed that there is separation process occurs and mass transfer coefficient was calculated which is 0.00177 cm/min. This study aims to fabricate a simple microfluidic device with high performance efficiency. Therefore, there is still room for improvement in order to come out with higher mass transfer coefficient for microfluidic hollow fibre device for future wearable artificial kidney device.