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An Investigation Of Centrifugal Blood-Cell Separation, Timothy Edward Roche

Dissertations

This dissertation investigated the centrifugal, batch separation of whole blood into subpopulations of red blood cells (erythrocytes) and white blood cells (leukocytes). Separations took place in a custom-built centrifuge (using a seal-less, anti-twisting feed/withdrawal system) containing, a 25-ml capacity separation chamber. The blood separation chamber had dart-shaped geometry in the radial plane and a constant depth in the axial direction. Separation experiments were performed on whole bovine blood at varying hematocrit, centrifuge speed, and batch duration. A small, companion study of whole human blood separation runs also were conducted; they concentrated on batch duration effect and achieved superior separations.

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