Ceramic foams are promising, highly porous materials, with a wide range of specific surface area and low fluid flow resistance, which are well-suited for filtering applications. They are comprised mainly of macrovoids that are interconnected with struts. A branch-shaped reconstruction algorithm is introduced in the present work to reconstruct various ceramic foams from electron microscopy images using the Laguerre tessellation method. Subsequently, the reconstructed samples are used for the numerical calculation of pore structure and transport properties, including specific surface area, tortuosity, effective diffusivity, and flow permeability. Following comparison with experimental data, this reconstruction method is shown to be more reliable than typical analytical expressions that are suggested in the literature for the aforementioned structural and transport properties. Extracting the equivalent pore radius of the reconstructed domains offers improved accuracy of the analytical expressions for the permeability estimation.
The transport and reaction phenomena that take place in multi-layered mixed-matrix membranes with activated carbon (AC) sorbents that are expected to improve extra-corporeal blood purification, are studied at the macroscopic scale. A model was developed that aims at the description of the removal efficiency of harmful uremic toxins from the blood in the presence of carbon-adsorptive particles and produces results that are aligned with the experimental data. The importance of the generally unknown kinetic rate constants of the association of toxins to albumin is investigated through sensitivity analysis. Matching with further experimental data allowed the extraction of vital kinetic rate constants for key uremic toxins such as indoxyl sulfate (IS) and p-cresyl sulfate (PCS). Moreover, the effects of the plasma composition, as well as of the membrane loading with activated carbon, on the total removal of the protein-bound toxins are quantified and discussed.
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