| Grant number: | 18/18722-6 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral |
| Start date: | March 01, 2019 |
| End date: | July 31, 2022 |
| Field of knowledge: | Engineering - Chemical Engineering - Industrial Operations and Equipment for Chemical Engineering |
| Principal Investigator: | Lucia Helena Innocentini Mei |
| Grantee: | Tahmasb Hatami |
| Host Institution: | Faculdade de Engenharia Química (FEQ). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil |
Abstract Scaffolds with 3D structures are abundantly used in perfusion bioreactors to the aim of stem cell expansion and differentiation to enhance patient life expectancy. As ready-made scaffolds commonly fabricate using solvent casting/particle leaching (SC/PL), phase separation, foaming, or electrospinning, some chemical solvents remain in their structure that may seriously affect patients healthy. Using supercritical CO2 instead of organic solvents can tackle this drawback for constructing healthy scaffolds from polymers such as polylactide (PLA) and poly (µ-caprolactone) (PCL), combined with ZnO. So, this study aimed to design, construct, and validate a supercritical deposition-foaming (SDF) unit, and investigated the effect of temperature, pressure, types of polymers and fillers, depressurization procedure, and for the first time the impact of number of pressurization-static time- depressurization cycles on the porosity, pore size distribution, and mechanical strength of composite scaffolds. In order to minimize the required number of experiments to fully evaluate the impacts of aforementioned factors, the unit, which contains both supercritical fluid deposition and foaming, will be modeled, for the first time, based on momentum, and mass balances equations together with population balance equation. The partial differential equations of the model will be solved numerically, the model results will be compared with the experimental data, and the best values of the independent variables will be determined using genetic algorithm optimization technique to optimize the process accordingly. | |
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