Development of thermoelectric cooling system for tissue ablation

KarimNejadAliabadi, Parya (2017). Development of thermoelectric cooling system for tissue ablation. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

There is growing interest in the use of cryosurgical treatment for the ablation of cancerous and diseased tissue. This thesis describes experimental and numerical investigation of the thermoelectric devices to be utilized in development of the cryosurgical probe for generating freezing and rewarming temperature required for tissue ablation. Thermoelectric cooling devices were used in this research due to being compact, noiseless with no moving parts and no circulating refrigerant. A novel three-dimensional model of human living tissue including metabolic heat, perfusion of blood and variation of tissue properties with temperature has been developed to determine thermal behaviour of tissue during cryosurgery process and predict the cooling requirement of the cryosurgical probe using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.2 software. COMSOL Multiphysics was used for the first time to develop three dimensional model of single stage and multistage thermoelectric devices and to predict the temperature difference across the thermoelectric modules at different input of electrical power. It is concluded that three stage thermoelectric module is capable of generating the temperature of the 213 K for cancer tissue ablation. The laboratory prototype of the cryosurgical probe was developed to investigate the performance of three stage thermoelectric device and the minimum temperature of the approximately 240 K were achieved in the experimental test. A circular hollow pin fin with lower thermal resistance was developed in SolidWorks flow simulation 2015 software and introduced as a suitable heat exchanger to be used in the laboratory prototype.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):