Designing blood oxygenators using analogue fluids.

Mass transfer and friction factor correlations for commercially available hollow fibre and flat sheet blood oxygenators have been determined experimentally. Water was used as a substitute for blood. The diffusion of oxygen into and out of water has been studied. Three different flow configurations have been investigated: flow inside hollow fibres, flow outside and across woven hollow fibre bundles and flow in thin channels. For flow inside the fibres and in thin channels, the results obtained here are in close agreement with analogous theoretical correlations. The results for flow across bundles of woven hollow fibres may be compared to analogous results for flow in cross flow heat exchangers.