Blood fractionation

Blood components after centrifugation.
When blood is collected into a serum-separating tube (SST) and centrifuged, the serum becomes isolated from the red blood cells by a gel acting as a physical barrier to prevent inadvertent remixing of the components.

Blood fractionation is the process of fractionating whole blood, or separating it into its component parts. This is typically done by centrifuging the blood.

The resulting components are:

Serum separation tubes (SSTs) are tubes used in phlebotomy containing a silicone gel; when centrifuged the silicone gel forms a layer on top of the buffy coat, allowing the blood serum to be removed more effectively for testing and related purposes.

As an alternative to energy-consuming centrifugation, more energy-efficient technologies have been studied, such as ultrasonic fractionation.[1]

  1. ^ Smalberger C, Nathan M, Rubin DM, Nel M, Kotopoulis S, Carlson CS, Postema M (2022). "Experimental setup for the ultrasonic fractionation of flowing whole blood in a capillary". Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering. 8 (2): 89–92. doi:10.1515/cdbme-2022-1024.

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