In search of a thermodynamic description of biomass yields for chemotrophic growth of microorganisms

Abstract

Chemical and thermodynamic approaches to estimate biomass yields have been evaluated with respect to their general applicability, the absence of intrinsic problems and their relation to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. None of the methods appears to satisfy these 3 criteria. However a method based on Gibbs energy dissipation is proposed, which satisfies these 3 requirements, and provides very good results for biomass yield estimations. © 1993 IUPAC