Magnetic cell separations are a simple and effective way of sorting red blood cells based on the cellâs oxygenation equilibrium profile. Magnetic techniques can be especially useful in treating sickle cell disease (SCD) because of the uniquely different oxygenation equilibrium caused by the disease. Further understanding of the relationships between variables governing the performance of these separators is needed. The magnetic separation in a catch-and-release style separator is hypothesized to be affected by the balance between magnetic forces holding the cells in the separator to the hydrodynamic force pulling the cells off the separators. In this study, we investigated the effect of flow rate in packed column magnetic separators exposed to different external magnetic field strengths.
