Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THIN FILM EVAPORATION: A STUDY ABOUT CELLS CRYOPRESERVATION
Submission Author:
Guilherme Steffenon , RS
Co-Authors:
Guilherme Steffenon, Jacqueline Copetti, Mario Henrique Macagnan, Álisson Renan Stochero da Silva, Massoxi Cuiêca, Jeferson Diehl de Oliveira
Presenter: Administrador ABCM
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-0814
Abstract
Cellular cryopreservation has been a major focus of studies in the areas of heat transfer and health. A series of researches have been carried out to determine what is the best way to preserve biological materials such as stem cells, embryos, ovaries, oocytes, sperm and others. Cryopreservation basically consists of cooling the cells to cryogenic temperatures, which can vary between -80 and -190 ° C. This process can occur in several ways, with slow freezing and vitrification as the two main methods. However, this cryopreservation is a process that can often be harmful to the cells, since the liquid phase can turn into ice crystals that cause cryoinjury in the cellular material. With this, there are two ways to avoid these cell injuries, which is the addition of cryoprotective agents (CPAs) or with an increase in the cooling rate. Despite reducing the cryoinjuries, CPAs still present a cytotoxic risk when they are not completely removed after cryopreservation. So, the best way to ensure cell safety is to increase the cooling rate, which is basically what the vitrification process does when compared to slow freezing. However, it was noticed some limitations in the freezing rates even with the vitrification, making it to be more studied and improved using the thin film evaporation method of liquid nitrogen. With this evaporation method, it is possible to reach cooling rates in the values of 150,000 ° C / min, using a sample structure based on a porous surface that facilitates the transfer of heat between cells and nitrogen liquid. Therefore, this work intends to study the thin film evaporation process for cryopreservation of cells, using mathematical models and numerical simulations to predict some behaviors. This study will be done using as a basis some experimental works already developed, using CFD modeling and ANSYS Fluent ® software.
Keywords
Cryopreservation, Thin Film Evaporation, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), Vitrification Process
