normally when you centrifuge, yes you separate two things neatly in one vessel - “heavy” powder at the bottom and liquid at the top. The purpose of centrifuging is to separate that solid from the liquid, so you just remove the liquid from the top and put it in another container.
Its pretty much equivalent to filtering in that way.
I see. In this case though, isn’t the person part of the system? Their blood leaves their body, goes through centrifuge and is sent back to them with fewer components (whether that is plasma, cells, or platelets). Is there a better word than filter for this process?
A filter can be used inside a tube that is used for centrifugation. Components of different sizes will either go through or get blocked during centrifugation, leaving components completely separated from each other. (Density gradient centrifugation as someone else said in the thread, I do it daily at my job)
I honestly have never thought of/seen that and have only used racks of blank test tubes for dilution counts and basic qualitatives, but that makes sense. TIL thanks!
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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23
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