A Validated CFD Model for Gas Exchange in Hollow Fiber Membrane Oxygenators: Incorporating the Bohr and Haldane Effects

Abstract

Chronic respiratory diseases claim nearly four million lives annually, making them the third leading cause of death worldwide. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is often the last line of support for patients with severe lung failure. Still, its performance is limited by an incomplete understanding of gas exchange in hollow fiber membrane (HFM) oxygenators. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has become a robust oxygenator design and optimization tool. However, most models oversimplify O₂ and CO₂ transport by ignoring their physiological coupling, instead relying on fixed saturation curves or constant-content assumptions. For the first time, this study introduces a novel physiologically informed CFD model that integrates the Bohr and Haldane effects to capture the coupled transport of oxygen and carbon dioxide as functions of local pH, temperature, and gas partial pressures. The model is validated against in vitro experimental data from the literature and assessed against established CFD models. The proposed CFD model achieved excellent agreement with experiments across blood flow rates (100–500 mL/min ), with relative errors below 5% for oxygen and 10–15% for carbon dioxide transfer. These results surpassed the accuracy of all existing CFD approaches, demonstrating that a carefully formulated single-phase model combined with physiologically informed diffusivities can outperform more complex multiphase simulations. This work provides a computationally efficient and physiologically realistic framework for oxygenator optimization, potentially accelerating device development, reducing reliance on costly in vitro testing, and enabling patient-specific simulations.