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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Industry/University Cooperative Projects Center

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Cobe Cardiovascular

Company Overview

Bob Collins and Ran Bellows founded COBE LABORATORIES, INC. in 1964. While working at a medical company in California, Bob and Ran identified an opportunity to supply pre-assembled custom tubing sets for cardiopulmonary bypass during a time when clinicians were assembling their own perfusion circuits. Thus, COBE was born in Bob Collins' garage, where the assembling of custom heart-lung packs was done. With the most comprehensive and advanced cardiopulmonary and autologous blood processing product offering, COBE Cardiovascular is dedicated to continue its history of excellence in developing and producing innovative cardiovascular and autologous transfusion therapy products.

The project objective is to design a remotely driven (magnetic drive through a wall)
centrifugal pump for transporting human blood with these constraints:

  • Flow rate up to 8 liter/min
  • Pressure generation up to 750 mmHg
  • Maximum rotational speed of 3500 rpm
  • Total fluid volume <= 40cc (includes pump, tubing, etc.)
  • Blood compatible materials
  • Bearing designed for reliability during extended duration of use
  • Negligible heat generation- No clotting!
  • Improved bearing design and reliability
  • Flow dynamics to entrain incoming air without passing to outlet or shredding (No air into blood!) and prevent thrombosis
  • Run for extended time of 100 hours (extend life from 6 hours to multiple days)
  • Need to decrease size of blood volume needed to prime the pump (i.e. the "prime" volume)
  • Design configuration must mate with pre-existing inlet and outlet components (between a reservoir and a blood oxygenator)

If the senior design team meets this primary objective, then their secondary objective will be to design a centrifugal pump scaled for use with a pediatric sized patient with these additional constraints:

  • Flow rate up to 5 liter/min
  • Total priming volume <=30cc (includes pump, tubing, etc.)