Project Title: Dialysis Cell Apparatus

Team Members: Paul Bezdicek, Jared Horn, Kyle Anderson, Andy Ries, and Nick Harrington

Department: Mechanical Engineering

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Don Froehlich

Sponsors: SDSU Chemistry Dept. and Avera Research Institute 

With the help of the Chemistry Dept. and Avera Research Institute, our group designed a functional apparatus that will produce a medical grade, low acidic gel used in patient care. The gel is produced from two liquids with varying acidity. Currently, the gel is produced by manually mixing various quantities of the two liquids in a beaker. The problems with this procedure include inconsistent mixtures as well as tedious and time consuming testing by laboratory technicians. Our design objective was to produce an apparatus that will control the mixing of the two liquids with controllable flow rates that will produce a pressure within a predetermined range as well as accurately measuring the pH of the final product. To accomplish this task, the apparatus utilizes pumps, pressure transducers, a dialysis cell for mixing, ADC module and associated software as well as a pH electrode and module for the measurement of acidity. Being a medical product, there is zero tolerance for contamination for obvious reasons. Therefore, with modern sensors and data acquisition equipment, our apparatus allows researchers to consistently produce the product with little variation.