Combined opto-acoustic particle separation for manufactured red blood cells

The clinical manufacture of red blood cells shows great promise to meet the ever increasing demand for blood worldwide. However, many challenges remain unsolved, one of which is the separation of the cells once produced. This seminar will discuss the scale-up challenges for optical radiation pressure in combination with acoustic levitation within a microfluidic chip. Bulk particle streaming can be achieved using acoustic levitation, while optical manipulation allows for more minute, local control. The combination of these techniques present unique challenges to scale-up including thermal distortion of the flow, acoustic distortion and localised thermophoresis. Tools including COMSOL have been implemented to replicate, identify, better understand and overcome unknown flow behaviour observed in experimental data. The work presented here will describe some of the engineering challenges associated with the scale-up and application of such techniques the separation of red blood cells.