A Magnetic Fluid Shaft Seal for Blood Pumps
Kazumitsu Sekine, Yoshinori Mitamura, Shun Murabayashi, Ikuya Nishimura, Ryohei Yozu
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Pages 95-96
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Pages 95-96
A magnetic fluid (MF) seal was specially designed for use in an axial-flow blood pump. There are some potential problems to be solved for the use as a shaft seal for blood pumps. Experimental and theoretical sealing pressures, a long-term performance of the MF seal and biocompatibility of MF were studied. The sealing pressure was about 200mmHg in blood in the experiments. The theoretical sealing pressure was over 300mmHg with the use of high magnetization MF. The results of long-term performance tests showed that the durability of the seal was over 1 year. The results of cytotoxicity tests showed that the MF had no major problems for clinical applications. The results of this study indicate that this simple and biocompatible liquid seal is useful for a rotary blood pump.
