Bilkent University
Mechanical Engineering Department
TÜBİTAK 1001 (114M597)
Start Date: November 1st, 2014
Completion Date: March 1st, 2017
The objective of this project is to develop a microfluidic device which can count live bacteria and somatic cells in a whole milk. For this purpose, both counting following the focusing of particles via inertial microfluidics, and counting via florescent tagging and without any separation are performed. The focusing of the particles wth diameter larger than 6 micrometer is achieved via inertial microfluidics. A computational model which predicts the focusing performance of a microfluidic device has been developed in the project. Due to the fact that optic signal intensity is not high enough for the whole milk applications, the counting is achieved with lower flow rates. A microfluidic device which enables counting of cells/bacteria at small flow rates has been designed and two alternative counting algorithms have been developed. For most of the bio-particle concentrations, the counting is achieved with 90% accuracy. Cell and bacteria count is performed via total 20 minutes of proses time on a portable platform. The counting device designed in this project has an overall dimension of 25cmx25cmx25cm and weights approximately 9 kg. The cost of the counting for one single set is estimated as 20TL.