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Gas exchange is the physical process by which gases move passively by diffusion across a surface. For example, this surface might be the air/water interface of a water body, the surface of a gas bubble in a liquid, a gas-permeable membrane , or a biological membrane that forms the boundary between an organism and its extracellular environment.
The anatomy of the airways means inspired air must pass through the mouth, trachea, bronchi and bronchioles (anatomical dead space) before it gets to the alveoli where gas exchange will occur; on exhalation, alveolar gas must return along the same path, and so the exhaled sample will be purely alveolar only after a 500 to 1,000 ml of gas has ...
The acini are the basic units of respiration, with gas exchange taking place in all the alveoli present. [6] The alveolar membrane is the gas exchange surface, surrounded by a network of capillaries. Oxygen is diffused across the membrane into the capillaries and carbon dioxide is released from the capillaries into the alveoli to be breathed ...
The primary purpose of breathing is to refresh air in the alveoli so that gas exchange can take place in the blood. The equilibration of the partial pressures of the gases in the alveolar blood and the alveolar air occurs by diffusion. After exhaling, adult human lungs still contain 2.5–3 L of air, their functional residual capacity or FRC ...
Gas exchange takes place in the gills which consist of thin or very flat filaments and lammellae which expose a very large surface area of highly vascularized tissue to the water. Other animals, such as insects, have respiratory systems with very simple anatomical features, and in amphibians, even the skin plays a vital role in gas exchange.
The self-diffusion coefficient of neat water is: 2.299·10 −9 m 2 ·s −1 at 25 °C and 1.261·10 −9 m 2 ·s −1 at 4 °C. [2] Chemical diffusion occurs in a presence of concentration (or chemical potential) gradient and it results in net transport of mass. This is the process described by the diffusion equation.
Exchange of gases in the lung occurs by ventilation and perfusion. [1] Ventilation refers to the in-and-out movement of air of the lungs and perfusion is the circulation of blood in the pulmonary capillaries. [1] In mammals, physiological respiration involves respiratory cycles of inhaled and exhaled breaths.
Perfusion rate (Q) is the total blood volume that enters the alveolar capillaries per unit time (1 minute) during the gas exchange. Therefore, the ventilation-perfusion ratio represents the volume of gas that enters the alveoli compared to the volume of blood that enters the alveoli per minute.