Development of a novel reactor for removing Heparin during extracorporeal procedures

• Main Author: Varghese, Manju Sunil
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: NO KEYWORDS
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10539/5678

Heparin administration during extracorporeal procedures such as kidney dialysis and heart surgeries is a challenging problem, as under heparinisation leads to clotting and over heparinisation may cause excessive bleeding complications. Various reactor designs including the use of heparinase and poly-L-lysine.HBr hollow fiber have been proposed, however none of them have been clinically approved yet. This work presents the possibility of designing a packed bed reactor with poly-Llysine/ alginate beads. The poly-L-lysine/alginate beads have been used widely in fields of microencapsulation of cells and can be made using techniques such as the Initech encapsulation and layer by layer approach. In some cases ginipin has been used for microcapsule preparations to provide stronger cross linking. In this study, the poly-L-lysine beads are made using the encapsulation procedure patented by Chang18 (1992). Batch experiments, using saline, fetal calf serum and blood were performed to investigate the efficiency of the beads. The absorption of heparin was determined to be a first order absorption process and fits the Freundlich Isotherm. The beads were determined to be relatively safe in blood. The absorption of heparin was linked to the poly-L-lysine content in the membrane. Thus the rate of the amount of heparin absorbed could be increased by increasing the membrane thickness or by increasing the number of poly-L-lysine/alginate beads. The results were used to investigate the feasibility of using a packed bed reactor for the absorption process by adjusting the specifications of the reactor and analysing simple flow models.