Elsevier

Cryobiology

Volume 3, Issue 4, January–February 1967, Pages 318-327
Cryobiology

Thermal conductivity measurements and predictions for biological fluids and tissues*

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0011-2240(67)80005-1Get rights and content

Summary

The thermal conductivities of normal samples of biological fluids and tissues determined experimentally have been presented. A special, unidirectional heat flow apparatus which yields absolute conductivity results was described. Conductivity measurements were reported for the following specimens: human blood and plasma; bovine muscle, vitreous humor, aqueous humor, lung, liver, kidney, bone marrow, fat, and brain; chicken skin and egg yolk.

The thermal conductivities of several tissues measured after these specimens were slowly frozen to a little below 32°F and then slowly thawed were presented; the conductivities increased 10 to 20% above values obtained for corresponding unstressed specimens. The corresponding conductivity changes for samples that were cryogenically frozen and more quickly warmed were smaller.

The thermal conductivities of all the biological fluids and tissues studied also were predicted using mathematical heat conduction models based on the premise that all biological specimens are composed of three primary materials, namely, water, fat, and protein. With the exception of one stratified biological species and one contaminated specimen, the predicted conductivities for one of the mathematical models differed from measured values by ±3% or less.

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    The yellow marrow value provided by Hasgall et al. (2016) is taken from McIntosh and Anderson (2010), who simply assign a porcine fat tissue value of 0.19 W m−1 K−1, which is not very conclusive. The Poppendiek et al. (1967) also reports a value of 0.22 W m−1 K−1 for bovine marrow, although they do not clarify whether it is for red or yellow. We conducted different simulations to determine the causes of the dispersion of the k values in the literature for trabecular bone.

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*

The thermal conductivity research on biological fluids and tissues presented here was supported by the Medicine and Dentistry Branch of the Office of Naval Research. An early version of the thermal conductivity apparatus used in this research was first developed in connection with Grant H6699 from the National Institutes of Health where the equipment was used to measure the thermal conductivity of blood.

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