Thin-Film Evaporation Heat Transfer of Liquid Nitrogen and Its Application in Cell Vitrification

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fengmin Su ◽  
Yiming Fan ◽  
He Xu ◽  
Nannan Zhao ◽  
Yulong Ji ◽  
...  

Abstract Cell vitrification has been an important method of cell cryopreservation. The faster the cooling rate is, the higher the cell survival rate is. However, in conventional cell vitrification methods, film boiling forms a vapor-blanket on the surface, which hinders further improvement of the cooling rate. To eliminate the problem, this article attempted to replace film boiling with thin-film evaporation (TFE) of liquid nitrogen. The experimental system was developed to investigate the TFE heat transfer characteristics of liquid nitrogen. Then, prostate cancer cells were cryopreserved by TFE vitrification method, open pulled straw vitrification method, and equilibrium freezing method. The results showed that the vitrification method of TFE obtained a higher cooling rate and better cell survival rate than the two other cell cryopreservation methods. Thus, the feasibility of this method was preliminarily proved viable when applied to the cell vitrification process. In addition, both the cooling rate and the cell survival rate are affected by the concentration of the cryoprotectant in the cell suspension. The cooling rate decreases as the concentration of the cryoprotectant increases, but the cell survival rate increases first and decrease afterward with an increase in the cryoprotectant concentration, in which an optimum value exists. This study demonstrates the practicality of the new ultrafast cell vitrification method.

Author(s):  
Fengmin Su ◽  
Yiming Fan ◽  
He Xu ◽  
Nannan Zhao ◽  
Yangbo Deng ◽  
...  

Abstract Thin film evaporation is an efficient phase change heat transfer style, and could achieve ultra-high cooling rate if it was applied for cells vitrification. In this paper, an experimental study for prostate cancer cells vitrification was done. The cells ultra-high speed freezing method was based on thin film evaporation of liquid nitrogen. In order to examine the feasibility of the new method, the comparison experiments, in which the other two generic approaches of cell cryopreservation were used, were done. The methods were respectively the equilibrium freezing method and the open pulled straws vitrification method. At the same time, the influences of the concentration of cryoprotectant on cooling rate and cell survival rate were analyzed. The results showed that the ultra-high speed freezing method based on thin film evaporation can obtain higher cooling rate and better cell survival rate than the other two conventional cryopreservation methods. It preliminarily proved the feasibility of this method applied to the cells vitrification process. In addition, both the cooling rate and the cell survival rate are affected by the concentration of the cryoprotectant in the cell suspension. The cooling rate decreases with the concentration of the cryoprotectant increasing, but cell survival rate increases first and decrease afterwards with the increase of the concentration of the cryoprotectant, in which an optimum value exists. This study will promote the practicality of the new ultra-fast cell freezing method.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fengmin Su ◽  
Nannan Zhao ◽  
Yangbo Deng ◽  
Hongbin Ma

Ultrafast cooling is the key to successful cell vitrification cryopreservation of lower concentration cryoprotective solution. This research develops a cell cryopreservation methodology which utilizes thin film evaporation and achieves vitrification of relatively low concentration cryoprotectant with an ultrafast cooling rate. Experimental results show that the average cooling rate of dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) cryoprotective solution reaches 150,000 °C/min in a temperature range from 10 °C to −180 °C. The ultrafast cooling rate can remarkably improve the vitrification tendencies of the cryoprotective solution. This methodology opens the possibility for more successful cell vitrification cryopreservation.


Author(s):  
Bingyao Lin ◽  
Nanxi Li ◽  
Shiyue Wang ◽  
Leren Tao ◽  
Guangming Xu ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, a thin film evaporation model that includes expressions for energy, mass and momentum conservation was established through the augmented Young-Laplace model. Based on this model, the effects of pore size and superheating on heat transfer during thin film evaporation were analyzed. The influence of the wick diameter of the loop heat pipe (LHP) on the critical heat flux of the evaporator is analyzed theoretically. The results show that pore size and superheating mainly influence evaporation through changes in the length of the transition film and intrinsic meniscus. The contribution of the transition film area is mainly reflected in the heat transfer coefficient, and the contribution of the intrinsic meniscus area is mainly apparent in the quantity of heat that is transferred. When an LHP evaporator is operating in a state of surface evaporation, a higher heat transfer coefficient can be achieved using a smaller pore size.


Author(s):  
Solomon Adera ◽  
Rishi Raj ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang

Thermal management is increasingly becoming a bottleneck for a variety of high power density applications such as integrated circuits, solar cells, microprocessors, and energy conversion devices. The performance and reliability of these devices are usually limited by the rate at which heat can be removed from the device footprint, which averages well above 100 W/cm2 (locally this heat flux can exceed 1000 W/cm2). State-of-the-art air cooling strategies which utilize the sensible heat are insufficient at these large heat fluxes. As a result, novel thermal management solutions such as via thin-film evaporation that utilize the latent heat of vaporization of a fluid are needed. The high latent heat of vaporization associated with typical liquid-vapor phase change phenomena allows significant heat transfer with small temperature rise. In this work, we demonstrate a promising thermal management approach where square arrays of cylindrical micropillar arrays are used for thin-film evaporation. The microstructures control the liquid film thickness and the associated thermal resistance in addition to maintaining a continuous liquid supply via the capillary pumping mechanism. When the capillary-induced liquid supply mechanism cannot deliver sufficient liquid for phase change heat transfer, the critical heat flux is reached and dryout occurs. This capillary limitation on thin-film evaporation was experimentally investigated by fabricating well-defined silicon micropillar arrays using standard contact photolithography and deep reactive ion etching. A thin film resistive heater and thermal sensors were integrated on the back side of the test sample using e-beam evaporation and acetone lift-off. The experiments were carried out in a controlled environmental chamber maintained at the water saturation pressure of ≈3.5 kPa and ≈25 °C. We demonstrated significantly higher heat dissipation capability in excess of 100 W/cm2. These preliminary results suggest the potential of thin-film evaporation from microstructured surfaces for advanced thermal management applications.


Author(s):  
Fengmin Su ◽  
Nannan Zhao ◽  
Yangbo Deng ◽  
Bohan Tian ◽  
Chunfeng Mu ◽  
...  

Ultra-fast cooling is the key to successful cell vitrification cryopreservation of lower concentration cryoprotective solution. This research develops a cell cryopreservation methodology which utilizes thin film evaporation and achieves vitrification of relatively low concentration cryoprotectant with an ultra-fast cooling rate. Experimental results show that the average cooling rate of dimenthylsulphoxide cryoprotective solution reaches 150,000°C/min in a temperature range from 10°C to −180°C. The ultra-fast cooling rate can remarkably improve the vitrification tendencies of the cryoprotective solution. This methodology opens the possibility for more successful cell vitrification cryopreservation.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Jiao ◽  
H. B. Ma ◽  
J. K. Critser

A mathematical model predicting the heat transport capability in a miniature flat heat pipe (FHP) with a wired wick structure was developed to analytically determine its maximum heat transport rate including the capillary limit. The effects of gravity on the profile of the thin-film-evaporation region and the distribution of the heat flux along a curved surface were investigated. The heat transfer characteristics of the thin-film evaporation on the curved surface were also analyzed and compared with that on a flat surface. Combining the analysis on the thin-film-condensation heat transfer in the condenser, the model can be used to predict the total temperature drop between the evaporator and condenser in the FHP. In order to verify the model, an experimental investigation was conducted. The theoretical results predicted by the model agree well with the experimental data for the heat transfer process occurring in the FHP with the wired wick structure. Results of the investigation will assist in the optimum design of the curved-surface wicks to enlarge the thin-film-evaporation region and a better understanding of heat transfer mechanisms in heat pipes.


Author(s):  
Chunji Yan ◽  
Xinxiang Pan ◽  
Xiaowei Lu

A mathematic model, which can be used to predict the evaporation and fluid flow in thin film region, is developed based on momentum and energy conservations and the augmented Young-Laplace equation in this paper. In the model the variations of the enthalpy and kinetics energy of the thin-film along the evaporating region are considered. By theoretical analysis, we have obtained the governing equation for thin film profile. The fluid flow and phase-change heat transfer in an evaporating extended meniscus are numerically studied. The differences between the model considering momentum conservation only and including both momentum and energy conservations are compared. It is found that the maximum heat flux of the thin-film evaporation by using two mathematical models obtained has no change, but when considering the momentum and energy conservations the total heat transfer rate unit width along the thin-film evaporation region is greater than that of only including momentum equation.


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