High Altitudes and Hemoglobin Production

The combination of oxygen with the hemoglobin (Hb) molecule, which carries oxygen through the blood, is a complex reaction, but for our purposes it can be represented by the following simplified equation  

At an altitude of 3 km, the partial pressure of oxygen is only about 0.14 bar, compared with 0.20 bar at sea level. According 

Mountaineers need weeks or even months to become acclimatized to the reduced level of oxygen in the 1 before scaling summits such as Mount Everest. 

In many important cases, the activity of a species can be approximated by a simple expression —Gases at low to moderate pressure a, == Pi/P° (Equation 10.3), where P is the partial pressure of the gas and P° is the standard pressure (1 bar). 

A chemical equilibrium process in which all reactants and products are in the same phase is homogeneous. If the reactants and products are not all in the same phase, the equilibrium is heterogeneous. 

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