Patent ID: 7025881

Claim:
A gravity driven device for filtering a donor's blood comprising: a) a filter arrangement for the separation of blood into plasma and cellular components, comprising: a housing having an open end area and a closed end area; an inlet line coupled to said housing for feeding donor blood into said open end area of said housing; an outlet line coupled to said housing for letting blood flow out of said open end area of said housing; a perforated plate having perforations disposed in said housing for coupling to both said inlet line and said outlet line; and a U-shaped fine membrane disposed below said perforated plate and formed from hollow fibers wherein said U-shaped fine membrane is fixed in an air-tight manner to said perforated plate wherein said perforations in said perforated plate form an opening for said hollow fibers, and wherein said hollow fibers form an inlet chamber and a remaining region of said housing outside of said hollow fibers forms an outlet chamber; b) a collection container for receiving the donor's blood upstream of said inlet line of said housing wherein said donor blood collection container has a vertical lower edge that is positioned with a preset vertical spacing above an upper edge of the filter arrangement; c) a feed line for fluid communication between said donor blood collection container and said filter arrangement; d) a collection container for receiving cellular components of the donor's blood downstream from said outlet area of the filter system such that a vertical upper edge of said cellular components collection container is disposed approximately at the vertical level of the lower edge of the filter arrangement; e) a collection container for receiving blood plasma downstream from said outlet chamber of the filter arrangement wherein said blood plasma collection container has an upper edge that is disposed at a vertical level lower than the lower edge of the filter arrangement wherein a set of connections between said filter arrangement, said collection containers via said inlet line, said outlet line to said inlet chamber, and said outlet line for said outlet chamber are germ tight, but can be broken via any known means without admitting air or causing interfering effects; f) a connector element in fluid communication with said donor blood collection container wherein said connector element is coupled to the donor to draw blood from the dohor into said donor blood connection container; g) a leukocyte depletion filter coupled to said feed line between said blood donor collection container and the filter arrangement; and h) a venting, connecting said outlet line to said feed line, upstream of said leukocyte depletion if filter.