Influence of Subenvironmental Conditions and Thermodynamic Coupling on a Simple Reaction-Transport Process in Biochemical Systems

Living systems must continuously receive substrates from subenvironment, and the population metabolic rate model is affected on this flow of substrates to be metabolized, its relevant variables, and the rate at which operates. This study focuses on the influences of resistances and bulk phase factors with in the subenvironment and by thermodynamic coupling on reaction-transport processes representing a simple enzymatic conversion of a substrate to a product. Thermodynamic coupling refers to mass flow, or a reaction velocity that occurs without or opposite to the direction imposed by its primary thermodynamic driving force. We considered the effects of (i) subenvironment resistances for the heat and mass flows of reacting substrate in the form of the ratios of Sherwood to Nusselt numbers, (ii) the subenvironment bulk phase temperatures and concentration of substrate, and (iii) the cross-coefficients responsible for the induced effects due to the thermodynamic coupling. In order to study these effects, the thermodynamically coupled balance equations using the first order simple elementary reaction are derived and solved numerically. In the balance equations, the linear phenomenological equations are used by assuming that the system is in the vicinity of global equilibrium. The overall results show that the subenvironment factors and cross-coefficients due to thermodynamic coupling may have considerable effects on reaction-transport processes