Krogh model is a
scientific model of
mass transfer
Mass transfer is the net movement of mass from one location (usually meaning stream, phase, fraction or component) to another. Mass transfer occurs in many processes, such as absorption, evaporation, drying, precipitation, membrane filtra ...
explaining the concentration of
molecular oxygen through a
cylindrical capillary tube as a function of a changing position over the capillary tube's length. It was first conceptualized by
August Krogh
Schack August Steenberg Krogh (15 November 1874 – 13 September 1949) was a Danish professor at the department of zoophysiology at the University of Copenhagen from 1916 to 1945. He contributed a number of fundamental discoveries within severa ...
in 1919 with the help of
Agner Krarup Erlang to describe oxygen supply in living tissues from human
blood vessel
Blood vessels are the structures of the circulatory system that transport blood throughout the human body. These vessels transport blood cells, nutrients, and oxygen to the tissues of the body. They also take waste and carbon dioxide away from ...
s.
Its applicability has been extended to various academic fields, and has been successful explaining drug diffusion, water transport, and ice formation in tissues.
Mathematical modeling
Krogh model is derived by applying
Fick's laws of diffusion
Fick's laws of diffusion describe diffusion and were derived by Adolf Fick in 1855. They can be used to solve for the diffusion coefficient, . Fick's first law can be used to derive his second law which in turn is identical to the diffusion ...
and the
law of conservation of mass over a radial
interval
Limitations
Although Krogh model is a good approximation, it underestimates oxygen consumption
because the cylinder model does not include all the tissue surrounding the capillary.
Notes
References
*
*{{citation, last1=Wei, first1=James, last2=Anderson, first2=John, year=1995, title=Advances in chemical engineering, Volume 19, isbn=978-0120085194, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U2ExzucYUJIC&q=Advances+in+chemical+engineering+19
Diffusion
Scientific models
Mathematics in medicine