SIMULATION ON RED BLOOD CELL’S SEPARATION IN MICROCHANNEL BY USING COMSOL© MULTIPHYSICS

Abstract

Plasma cell neoplasm disease was caused by the production of large amount of plasma cells which it is unnecessary for the body as it will accumulate in the bone marrow and cause blood thicken and damage the kidneys. Thus, there are several techniques that have been developed for the separation of plasma in blood e.g., viscosity-based sedimentation, size-based filtration, and complete blood count test. Yet, these techniques have some drawbacks such as blood cells easily damaged and do not meet the Point-of-Care (POCT) test features. Hence, in this study, an active separation technique; dielectrophoresis (DEP) force was applied in the X-shaped microchannel which was developed by using AutoCAD© software as it is easily to fabricate at a low cost, while resulting in a high rate of the separation efficiency. The flow profile of a blood distribution and movement along a microchannel was observed by COMSOL© Multiphysics software version 5.5 at various process conditions: blood inlet velocities; VIB=80-200 µm/s, concentration of blood cells; CIB=0.01-0.05 mol/dm3 and electrode voltages; E=-20-20V. It shows that as the inlet velocity is increases, the separation efficiency is increasing. While, as the concentration and electric field intensity is increases, the separation efficiency is decreases due to low DEP force. It shows 100% separation efficiency was obtained for plasma separation at VIB=120 µm/s, CIB= 0.01 mol/dm3, and E=±10V which resulted FDEP=-1.23×1014 N/m. This DEP separation technique can be applied to improve the efficiency of plasma separation process from blood cells and simultaneously increase the accuracy of the diagnostic.