Investigation on Heat and Mass transfer in a Dialyzer Membrane Model for the Development of Dialysate Temperature Controller

Abstract

During standard hemodialysis (HD), there is tendency for a rise in body temperature, which can possibly cause life-threatening complications. The analysis of thermal energy exchange in a dialyzer can be significant to provide constant body temperature, which can necessitate the development of an effective temperature controller. In this paper, the main aim is to evaluate the heat transfer that takes place in a dialyzer model during HD and a Polyflux 210H dialyzer membrane model was developed using COMSOL Multiphysics® software. The clearance rate of toxins was computed and validated for various blood flow rates. Then the heat transfer physics was added to investigate the effect of heat transfer taking place in the dialyzer. The clearance rates show significant improvement (<5% error) compared to previous published work (>11.7% error) and a strong agreement with the manufacturer's data. The model exhibited a trend in temperature profile across the dialyzer membrane and the blood temperature has decreased up to 1.15°C using cool dialysate settings. The dialyzer acts as a heat exchanger during HD. Our study reveals the temperature changes taking place in the dialyzer, which necessitates a system to control and regulate the dialysate temperature to compensate for this heat loss.