There are a number of products available in the market from companies such elveflow, fluigent, dolomite etc. Which among them performs best and is worth the price?
We are interested in developing a system where no flow control device is used for fluid delivery. Hence, a pressure based system will help us in controlling the pressure parameters, with better precision and control as compared to syringe pumps.
Budget: 9-10k USD
Flow samples - Blood, serum/plasma, microsphere (1-5 micron range) suspension
Flow rates - 10-50 ul/min...channel is a square channel with channel height : .2-.5 mm, width: 5-6 mm, length : 50-60 mm. Channel design may change in the future
Hi Rohan,
The Bioflux system from Fluxion (https://bioflux.fluxionbio.com/) is a fully integrated microfluidic system using a pressure interface. This system is based around a glass bottomed 24- or 48- well plate and allows you to image two channels in parallel in real time; the software is incredibly intuitive and allows a huge range of flow rates to be applied. I hope that this may help.
Alex
Hi. I have been using pressure pump from Elveflow for a long time. I do not know the model but it has three channels and easily used for supplying any fluids to the microfluidic systems. One of the most important thing for supplying systems is pressure or flow rate fluctuations created inevitably in the system and we should get rid of them. So it is better to buy a system with less fluctuation. Good luck.
Hello Rohan,
As Ali mentions, Elveflow offer a wide range of quality products that can be tailored for your application.
If you're looking at low pressure systems, I would also suggest looking at Dolomite's Fluika range of pumps/valves. We purchased a vacuum pump and control valve - the price was good and they can be easily automated with LabVIEW software.
One thing to point out is that one brilliant aspect of pressure-driven microfluidics is that small changes in the tubing ID can result in massive changes in the flow rate (4th order). This is very useful if you also have some flexibility in the device geomtery. Of course, you should try to optimise the hydraulic resistance of the circuit for improved flow control and stability.
Kind regards,
Jules
Researchers normally have to debate between an in-house prototype instrument and a commercial offering, in the past few years, some companies started to manufacture pressure controllers with enough flexibility and lower price tag. If your budget allows, it saves a lot of time and gains more functionalities to buy a pressure controller system from the market.
We recently tried out an all-in-one pressure / flow controller with total of 8 channels from PreciGenome. Since we are in a hurry to build our microfluidic control system, we choose this vendor from California, USA. The reply to our technical problems and questions really very quick.
This flow control system comes with a GUI to allow ad-hoc experiments or complicated scripting. It even provides a serial port if more sophisticated communication protocol is required. Able to control a rotary valve or select valve together to build a multi-sample delivery system with controlled sample volume injection.
Of course, all of them can be built around a NIDAQ card with your own pressure regulator and sensors. Depending on how much resource and time one can afford, it shouldn't be too hard to make a decision.
https://www.precigenome.com/ufluidic-controller
Check out the website from PreciGenome, it helps you make a decision
Pengtao Wang
Pengtao,
Could you please let me know if you are still satisfied with the PreciGenome pressure controller and support? Have you faced any problems regarding the flow rate fluctuations?
Thanks,
Hi Amin
The company ZenFluidics (https://zenfluidics.com/) is about to launch its pressure-based flow control device for microfluidic applications. It promises to be the most versatile and cost-effective ecosystem for microfluidics, including a two-channel pressure controller with embedded pressure/vacuum source and liquid flow sensors of several ranges, a 12-channel rotatory valve selector, and a 8-channel solenoid valve controller. All of these devices can be connected via USB to its graphical block-programing software specifically designed for the automation of protocols by non-experts in programming and electronics. If you are a user with some programming skills, serial communications are also available, both physically in a UART port and virtually emulated in the USB port. Finally, C# and Python APIs will be available to use the full-speed USB communications for developing your own software applications for protocol automation.
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