Increasing the Removal Efficiency of CPAs by the Dilution-Concentration Method: Adaptive Optimization of Diluent Flow Rates

A dilution-concentration method for removing cryoprotective agents from cryopreserved blood was proposed in our previous work. In this study, the method was optimized adaptively by adjusting diluent flow rates. In the optimization, the diluent flow rate was set to vary with time, the tendency of which was designed to automatically minimize the washing time whereas the volume maximum of red blood cells was guaranteed below the upper tolerance limit. The results show that the optimized diluent flow rate decreases firstly and then increases rapidly. By doing so, the washing time is reduced by about 50%. In practice, the optimization strategy presented here will be very useful in the rapid preparation of cryopreserved blood for clinical use.