Over a thousand combinations of polyanions and polycations were tested to search for new polymer candidates that would be suitable for encapsulation of living cells. The combination of sodium alginate, cellulose sulfate, poly (methylene-co-guanidine) hydrochloride, calcium chloride, and sodium chloride was most promising. In parallel, a novel multiloop chamber reactor was developed to control the time of complex formation and to negate gravitational effects such as pancreatic islet sedimentation and droplet deformation during the encapsulation process. Encapsulated rat islets demonstrated glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in vitro, and reversed diabetes in mice. This new capsule formulation and encapsulation system allows independent adjustments of capsule size, wall thickness, mechanical strength, and permeability, which may offer distinct advantages for immunoisolating cells.
The momentumless coalescence of drops of the same liquid, separated by an immiscible host, is studied experimentally. Observations show that for low-viscosity drops of unequal sizes, there is considerable mixing following coalescence, with the smaller drop penetrating the larger drop as a vortex. The extreme case of coalescence of a small drop with the bulk of the same liquid at a flat interface with an immiscible liquid is studied in detail. The penetration depths of small drops (1-5 mm) following coalescence are measured and correlated with theoretical predictions. It is found that in the range of the investigation, the penetration depth is proportional to the 5/4 power of drop diameter and inversely proportional to the square root of the drop viscosity.
The phenomenon of liquid drop impact onto the surface of a deep pool of the same liquid is studied in the context of bubble entrapment, using high-resolution digital photography. Three liquids, pure water, glycerin/water mixtures, and silicon oil, have been used to investigate the effect of viscosity (μ) and surface tension (σ) on regular bubble entrapment, and the associated impact crater signatures. The global viscous effect is seen as a shift in the classical inviscid bubble entrapment limits, whereas, at the impact crater, the local effect is seen as a weakening of the capillary wave, which is responsible for bubble pinching, and a weakening of the intensity of crater rebound. Bubble entrapment, which results from a competition between concentric capillary pinching of the crater cusp and viscous damping, is captured well by the capillary number Ca (Ca = mu Viσ, where Vi is the drop impact velocity). The measured peak entrapped bubble size decreases exponentially as capillary number increases, with the cut-off capillary number for bubble entrapment estimated to be around 0.6. The critical crater cone angle for peak bubble pinch-off weakly increases with capillary number, with the measured value in agreement with theory in the inviscid limit (low Ca). Additionally, the growth of the main body of the high-speed thin jet, formed immediately following bubble pinch-off, is fitted to a power-law singularity model. This suggests that the thin jet is similar to the hydraulic jets produced by the collapse of free-surface standing waves.
Oscillations of low-viscosity drops were studied in the microgravity environment of a Space shuttle flight. From the damped oscillation data, the inviscid frequency shift, due to nonlinearity, has been extracted using a central-averaging scheme. For the classical case of the oscillations of a free low-viscosity drop, it has been found that the frequency shift agrees well with the predictions of the inviscid nonlinear theory of Tsamopoulos & Brown (1983) for ε < 0.3. But for the oscillations of a rotating low-viscosity drop, under acoustic levitation, the frequency shift is smaller, and the percentage of time spent in prolate displacement is significantly less than that for the classical case.
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