Examination and Mathematical Modelling of Shrinkage Rate of Uniform Droplets in a Microfluidic System Designed for Biopreservation

Abstract

In this thesis, we developed a mathematical model to investigate a microfluidic method proposed by Dr. Mehmet Toner for pre-concentration of cells with CPAs in continuous flow under fewer mechanical and osmotic stresses than traditional methods. New method is based on trapping cells into aqueous droplets and controlling the CPA concentration in the droplet by adjusting the temperature of the system. A water immiscible organic phase, which can solve small amounts of water, is utilized to remove water from the cell containing aqueous droplets. We solved the mathematical model based on two-phase flow and mass transfer through a moving boundary layer using Finite Element Analysis calculations on Comsol software together with external functions from MATLAB and Excel. The model showed that it is possible to pre-concentrate mammalian cells with CPAs to 10 times the initial concentration below 4 minutes via the BioMEMS based microfluidic method. We determined the critical droplet sizes.