Theory

On the outset, the premise of an artificial lung is simple, when someones lungs are
unable to supply adequate oxygen to the body, often in emergency situations, it
may become necessary to provide oxygenation and carbon dioxide removal in the
blood in order to maintain organ function. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR,
can perform this task, inefficiently, for a short time. Should lung function be
severely inhibited for an extended duration medical professionals can instead turn
to either intracorporeal oxygenators, a device implanted within the body, or
extracorporeal oxygenators, a device outside the body. In this experiment we will be
focusing on optimizing a system, within biological parameters, to provide
extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO.
The governing theory of gas diffusion is that molecules move from an area of high
concentration, in our experiment the pure oxygen feed, to low concentration, our
water feed, across a membrane driven by steady state diffusion flux which can be
defined, by Ficks first law of diffusion, as:

C [1]
J =D
x

Where J is the diffusion flux, or the rate of transfer per unit area, D is the diffusion
coefficient, also known as the diffusivity, C is the concentration of the diffusing
substance, and x is the position.
As we are using a membrane as a biological analogue, the above can be simplified
to:
[2]
V O2 =K M A( PO 2 gPO 2 l)

Where the overall rate of oxygen exchange across the membrane is given by VO 2,
PO2g, and PO2l, are the partial pressures of oxygen in the liquid phase and vapor
phase, A is the total surface area, and KM is the permeability of the membrane. KM
can then be defined as:
[3]
D
KM =

Where , and D are the solubility coefficients of the gas within the membrane and
is the membrane thickness. Thus it can be seen that the governing variables for
oxygen diffusion are the membranes thickness as well as the partial pressure of the
oxygen in the gas feed.
As humans have a somewhat limited range of acceptable biological parameters this
puts significant constraints on the experimental conditions that can be tested. Given
the above, the most efficient design will likely be that with the membrane with the
greatest surface area, at the highest gas pressure. Furthermore, the temperature of
the water feed will also have an impact on the solubility of oxygen (CITATION 3),
whether this will have a significant impact on the resulting oxygenation is to be
determined. Overall, the precise impacts of any modifications of the aforementioned
variables in our system is not known and it is the purpose of this experiment to
determine this.

Khoi stick these into your citing program

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3082030/
2. http://www.alung.com/docs/articles/1996_Transplantation.pdf
3. http://www.ramp-
alberta.org/river/water+sediment+quality/chemical/temperature+and+dissol
ved+oxygen.aspx
4. https://www.google.ca/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKE
wj99L75xsvPAhWr1IMKHZKNC4cQFgguMAI&url=https%3A%2F
%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Ffile.PostFileLoader.html%3Fid
%3D56a659cf6225ff07d38b45c1%26assetKey%3DAS
%253A321833709047808%25401453742543069&usg=AFQjCNFYn0L6yTh19
sdWPbEYIyI2VsThTg&sig2=3PDjwv4K0EXVBHq28NMWGA