Water and heat exchanges in mammalian lungs

Abstract

A secondary function of the mammals' respiratory system is during inspiration to heat the air to body temperature and to saturate it with water before it reaches the alveoli. Relying on a mathematical model, we comprehensively analyze this function, considering all the terrestrial mammals (spanning six orders of magnitude of the body mass, $M$) and focusing on the sole contribution of the lungs to this air conditioning. The results highlight significant differences between the small and the large mammals, as well as between rest and effort, regarding the spatial distribution of heat and water exchanges in the lungs, and in terms of regime of mass transfer taking place in the lumen of the airways. Interestingly, the results show that the mammalian lungs appear to be designed just right to fully condition the air at maximal effort: all generations of the bronchial region of the lungs are mobilized for this purpose. For mammals with a mass above a certain threshold ($\simeq 5$ kg at rest and $\simeq 50$ g at maximal effort), it appears that the maximal value of this evaporation rate scales as $M^{-1/8}$ at rest and $M^{-1/16}$ at maximal effort and that around 40\% (at rest) or 50\% (at maximal effort) of the water/heat extracted from the lungs during inspiration is returned to the bronchial mucosa during expiration, independently of the mass, due to a subtle coupling between different phenomena. This last result implies that, above these thresholds, the amounts of water and heat extracted from the lungs by the ventilation scale with the mass such as the ventilation rate (i.e. as $M^{3/4}$ at rest and $M^{7/8}$ at maximal effort). Finally, it is worth mentioning that these amounts appear to remain limited, but not negligible when compared to relevant global quantities, even at maximal effort (4-6\%).