What is countercurrent mean?
What is countercurrent mean?
1 : flowing in an opposite direction. 2 : involving flow of materials in opposite directions countercurrent dialysis.
Is countercurrent a heat exchange?
Countercurrent Heat Exchange. Blood flowing from the body core to the periphery (like the legs & feet) carries heat that can be readily lost through the skin. Blood vessels in the neck also employ a countercurrent arrangement and that results in a brain temperature about 1°C cooler than that of the body.
What is a countercurrent flow in biology?
This is the way that a fish’s gills absorb the maximum amount of oxygen from the water. Water flows in the opposite direction to the blood flow in the gills to ensure that there is always a higher concentration of oxygen in the water than the concentration of oxygen in the blood.
What is the countercurrent mechanism in the kidney?
Countercurrent multiplication in the kidneys is the process of using energy to generate an osmotic gradient that enables you to reabsorb water from the tubular fluid and produce concentrated urine.
What is countercurrent extraction?
Countercurrent distribution is a separation process that is founded on the principles of liquid–liquid extraction where a chemical compound is distributed (partitioned) between two immiscible liquid phases (oil and water for example) according to its relative solubility in the two phases.
What is countercurrent gas exchange?
Countercurrent oxygen exchange (shown in the figure above) means the blood flows through the gills in the opposite direction as the water flowing over the gills. Since there is more oxygen in the water, the oxygen can flow from water to blood.
Do humans have countercurrent exchange?
Many animals (including humans) have another way to conserve heat. Such a mechanism is called a countercurrent heat exchanger. When heat loss is no problem, most of the venous blood from the extremities returns through veins located near the surface.
Which animals use countercurrent exchange?
Arctic foxes and wolves- use countercurrent exchange to heat and cool their feet so that they don’t freeze in the ices and snow. Jackrabbits- use this exchange in their ears to help cool their bodies.
What is countercurrent flow?
Countercurrent flow produces the maximum concentration difference over the entire length of the membrane and allows recovery of a substantial portion of the most highly diffusive solute while minimizing the transport of the less diffusive solutes.
Why does countercurrent flow happen?
Fish gills use a design called ‘countercurrent oxygen exchange’ to maximize the amount of oxygen that their blood can pick up. They achieve this by maximizing the amount of time their blood is exposed to water that has a higher oxygen level, even as the blood takes on more oxygen.
What is the countercurrent mechanism Why is it important?
The counter-current multiplier or the countercurrent mechanism is used to concentrate urine in the kidneys by the nephrons of the human excretory system. The nephrons involved in the formation of concentrated urine extend all the way from the cortex of the kidney to the medulla and are accompanied by vasa recta.
How does the countercurrent system work?
Fish gills use a design called ‘countercurrent oxygen exchange’ to maximize the amount of oxygen that their blood can pick up. Oxygen would quickly pass from the water into the blood, until the oxygen levels of the blood and water rapidly became the same, and oxygen diffusion into the blood would stop.
Which is an example of a countercurrent exchange system?
Examples of countercurrent exchange systems Fish Gill: to maximize O2 uptake Kidney: to maximize water reabsorption Tetrapod Limbs: to maximize heat exchange Principle of countercurrent exchangers: countercurrent exchangers maintain a constant gradient along their length to ensure that exchange takes place along the entire length.
How does the countercurrent system work in industry?
Countercurrent exchange is a mechanism occurring in nature and mimicked in industry and engineering, in which there is a crossover of some property, usually heat or some chemical, between two flowing bodies flowing in opposite directions to each other. Also, how does the countercurrent system work?
What is the purpose of counter current gas exchange?
What is countercurrent gas exchange? Counter current gas exchange (gills) Gills are very efficient at taking out what little oxygen is present in the water. This efficiency stems from an adaptation known as countercurrent exchange.
How does countercurrent oxygen exchange work in the gills?
Countercurrent oxygen exchange (shown in the figure above) means the blood flows through the gills in the opposite direction as the water flowing over the gills. In contrast, countercurrent oxygen exchange allows the blood to pick up 90 percent of the oxygen in the water.
Which is an example of countercurrent exchange in fish?
The process of oxygen transfer in the gills of a fish is a good example of the benefits of countercurrent exchange. As oxygen poor blood meets an opposed flow of oxygen rich water, the oxygen begins to diffuse out of the water and into the blood stream. This causes the concentration of oxygen in the water to drop and that in the blood to rise.
Which is the best definition of the word countercurrent?
(Entry 1 of 2) : a current flowing in a direction opposite that of another current. countercurrent. adjective. coun·ter·cur·rent | \\ˌkau̇n-tər-ˈkər-ənt, -ˈkə-rənt\\. Definition of countercurrent (Entry 2 of 2) 1 : flowing in an opposite direction. 2 : involving flow of materials in opposite directions countercurrent dialysis.
When do you think of countercurrent exchange?
Most of the time I think of countercurrent exchange in the winter, when I’m freezing my own tail feathers off, but it’s not just ducks and water birds that have it. Here are some examples: Fish gills- exchange oxygen from the high oxygen environment of the water around them into the low oxygen environment of their bloodstream.
Which is an example of a countercurrent heat exchanger?
For example, fish use it in their gills to transfer oxygen from the surrounding water into their blood, and birds use a countercurrent heat exchanger between blood vessels in their legs to keep heat concentrated within their bodies.