Flow in a rotating membrane plasma separator.

Rotating filter separators are very effective in the separation of plasma from whole blood, but details of the flow field in the device have not been investigated. The flow in a commercial device has been modeled computationally using the finite element code FIDAP. Taylor vortices appear in the upstream end of the annulus but disappear in the downstream end because of increasing blood viscosity as plasma is removed. Fluid transport at the upstream end of the annulus results from both translation of Taylor vortices and fluid winding around the vortices. If the inertial effects of the axial flow are reduced, less fluid winds around the vortices and more fluid is transported by the translation of the vortices. The pressure at the membrane is nonuniform in the region where vortices appear, although the relative magnitude of the fluctuations is small.