Patent Document ID: 8652088
Application ID: 13573243
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for accurately determining the apparent supersaturated solubility and rate at which a diffusible agent is precipitated from a solution or supersaturated solution due to change in temperature, pressure or addition of other agents containing the diffusible agent in a form that can bring about supersaturation of said agent, comprising: a) providing a probe comprising a section of relatively highly permeable membrane relative to any materials to which the membrane is attached for support and positioned between an inlet to a source of dialysate and an outlet to a receptacle, and through which membrane a diffusible agent is to be transferred; b) determining the value of γ 1 for the probe using a chosen sample volume, flow rate and resting time; c) putting said probe in contact with said medium in which is contained the agent to be transferred by diffusion; d) to said medium, creating a supersaturated solution by decreasing the temperature or pressure, or adding other agents that can create a supersaturation of said diffusible agent; e) perfusing a known quantity of a dialysate into the relatively highly permeable section of the probe at the same flow rate Q used to calculate γ 1 ; f) allowing said known quantity of dialysate to remain stationary for the same resting time t R used to calculate γ 1 ; g) flushing out said known quantity of dialysate with a single pulse to collect a sample of dialysate, of the same volume as that chosen in step (b), of a known volume V S , dialysate into said receptacle at the same flow rate used in step (d), above; h) determining the concentration of said diffusible agent in said dialysate; i) repeating steps (e) through (h) with the same flow rate, sample volume, and resting time; j) determining the fractional recovery at the beginning of a sample interval by calculating F R 0 ; k) calculating the concentration in the medium at the beginning of the sample interval as C D =C S /F R 0 .