Nosehouse: heat-conserving ventilators based on nasal counterflow exchangers.
Small birds and mammals commonly minimize respiratory heat loss with reciprocating counterflow exchangers in their nasal passageways. These animals extract heat from the air in an exhalation to warm those passageways and then use that heat to warm the subsequent inhalation. Although the near-constant volume of buildings precludes direct application of the device, a pair of such exchangers located remotely from each other circumvents that problem. A very simple and crudely constructed small-scale physical model of the device worked well enough as a heat conserver to suggest utility as a ventilator for buildings.
Vogel
Steven
S
Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham, NC 27708, USA. svogel@duke.edu
D000389:Air Conditioning / Q000295:instrumentation*; D000818:Animals; D040761:Biomimetic Materials; D001833:Body Temperature Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D004735:Energy Transfer; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D009666:Nose / Q000502:physiology*