Continuous inertial alignment and isolation of spherical microparticles and nonspherical flagellate microalgae

Flagellate microalgae play an increasingly significant role in environmental management and biotechnology for valuable bioproducts, excellent photosynthetic capability, and autonomic movement. However, multiple flagellate microalgae practically live together in the ocean and lake areas, and they are susceptible to contamination as a result of improper operations. Enthused by these aspects, we develop a reliable inertial microfluidic method to overcome the influence of flagella movement and non-spherical shape on the alignment and isolation of target flagellate microalgae. Firstly, a computational model incorporating fluid-structure interaction was established to investigate influence of releasing position and shape parameters on the displacement and rotation of non-spherical microalgal cells and numerically studied the processes of shape- and size-based particle separation. Secondly, the movement of different-size particles under diverse flow rates in the channel was explored, and the capability of this method was validated by aligning and separating 10 μm and 20 μm polystyrene particles. Thirdly, this method was applied to align H. pluvialis and isolate Dunaliella salina from the mixed microalgal samples to explore the influence of flow rate on the alignment and isolation of flagellate microalgae. Fourthly, this method was engineered to select 20 μm polystyrene particles from three types of particles and isolate H. pluvialis from the mixture of multiple microalgae species. Finally, we leveraged this approach to realize separation of H. pluvialis and Synedra ulna to explore the performance of this method in shape-based cell separation, and we isolated Euglena from microalgal cell wastes, including dead cells, bacteria, and particles. This method has promising prospects to be a reliable tool to isolate target flagellate microalgae to address problematic issues in environmental monitoring, pharmaceutical synthesis, and chronic wound treatment for the advantage of good adaptability and reliability.