Hydrostatic Pressure Generator (HPG)
Hydrostatic Pressure Generator Device (U.S. Pat. No. 9,303,244)
Methods and device of using hydrostatic pressure in a process(Pat. Pend.)
A Pressure Facilitated Diffusion system
HPG device can be used for enhancing the diffusion process of a fluid through a permeable material. Many processes, such as biological and chemical, occur by diffusion of a liquid into a permeable material. In these processes, increasing the penetration depth and rate of diffusion are of prime importance for assisting the fluid to reach deep in the material as well as reducing the time of processing.
For example, dissolution of minerals are believed to be diffusion controlled (Venugopalan et al.1996), or extraction of functional compounds from a material can be achieved by a solvent moving through the material (Alvarez-Rivera et al., 2017).
Passage of nutrients/chemicals into cell seeded gels/biomaterials can also be facilitated by applying hydrostatic pressure, which is expected to promote protein production or cell proliferation in tissue regeneration application, such as producing artificial tissues (e.g. cultured meat).
Using pressure-facilitated diffusion, a novel method for enhancing a chemical-based decellularization process was introduced, which was very effective in reducing the time for decellularization of cartilage tissue, showing a potential for producing ideal allogenic or xenogenic scaffolds (Kasra M, 2022).
Demonstration (color test)
For demonstration purposes, potato and cortical bone samples of about 10x10x10 mm were placed in the HPG chamber (Fig. 1A) filled with a liquid of a blue color (color test).
Figures 2 and 3 show the mid sections of the potato and cortical bone samples after 6 hours treatment with and without applying 10 MPa hydrostatic pressure.
Applying the pressure caused a complete penetration of the blue color in the whole potato tissues (Fig. 2A) as well as in the cortical bone samples (Fig. 3A) , whereas without applying the pressure, there was only about 1-2 mm penetration of the color into the tissues (Figs. 2B and 3B).
References
1. Venugopalan et al.,Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, 3:365-372, 1996.
2. Alvarez-Rivera et al., " Pressurized Liquid Extraction," Handbooks in Separation Science,Chapter 13 : 375-398, 2020.
3. Kasra M, "Hydrostatic Pressure-facilitated diffusion: Application in cartilage tissue decellularization", Orthopaedic Research Society, Annual Meeting, Tampa, Feb 2022.
Hydrosatic Pressure Generator (HPG)