Abstract

The special material properties of nanomaterials are particularly interesting for various industrial applications, but they also raise questions about possible risks for humans. In particular, there is a lack of data on long-term effects and uptake and distribution in the organism. The aim of the NanoINHAL project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is to develop an innovative testing system for investigating the toxic effects of airborne nanomaterials. A cell exposure system developed at the Fraunhofer Institute ITEM makes it possible to expose cell cultures and tissue sections to airborne substances and (nano)particles in order to investigate the interaction of the cells with the substances. Fraunhofer Institute SCAI supported the development of the exposure system through numerical flow simulations (CFD). The Technical University of Berlin and the company TissUse GmbH are developing so-called organ-on-a-chip systems, which allow different organ models on a chip to be simultaneously connected in a circuit and these cell and tissue models to be flowed through with medium. By combining the two technologies, the project aims to develop a test system that not only enables the investigation of direct effects of airborne nanomaterials on human respiratory models, but also the investigation of effects on other organs. In the NanoINHAL project, Fraunhofer Institute SCAI uses simulation methods to characterize and optimize the flow and the thermal conditions in the exposure system. Both the transport of nanoparticles in airborne flows and the essential thermal performance of the cell exposure system are investigated with simulation approaches using commercial and open source software. It became evident, that the simulation of the nanoparticle transport has some crucial influencing factors concerning both the numerical procedures and the necessary computation time. Due to a small temperature range the human cells require for viability and a sufficient high temperature gradient to ensure particle deposition with thermophoresis, the prediction of the thermal behavior of the exposure system with a Conjugate-Heat-Transfer simulation model gained substantial interest. Results of the simulation approaches will be demonstrated in this presentation.