A reactor-like spinneret used in 3D printing alginate hollow fiber: a numerical study of morphological evolution

In this paper, a reactor-like spinneret is proposed to generate a continuous hollow hydrogel fiber. In order to reliably control the deforming dynamics, the components of the spinneret are standardized in order to ease the online observation of morphological evolution. We found that not only did a co-flow occur in the tubular space, but a relatively large shrinkage of the shell layer at the outlet also occurred. Whereupon a weak coupling of the velocity field and diffusion-reacting co-flow was developed to describe the monitored co-flow morphology and to simulate the intermediate state of the concentration field, as well as to calculate the shrinkage profile with an integral formula. And a critical isogram [G]cri was determined to correspond to the morphological segmental feature, to trigger gelation and shrinkage as a threshold of solubility and the integral upper limit of the shrinkage region. Experimental evidence indicates that: the simulation is able to effectively predict the inner diameter of the hollow fiber; the transient inner diameter of the fiber at the outlet is expanded by approximately 70 μm (co-flow distance = 15 mm) as compared to the initial fluid dynamics value, and that the relative mean error of the simulated inner diameter was less than 8%. The proposed study provides deeper insight into the printing of hollow fibers and other gelling processes which utilize a reactor-like spinneret.