Comments on “in search of a thermodynamic description of biomass yields for the chemotrophic growth of microorganisms”

Abstract

In a recent publication, Heijnen and van Dijken (Biotechnol. Bioeng. 39: 833–858, 1992) reviewed the state of the art regarding the use of macroscopic methods in the correlation of biomass yields in growing microorganisms. In their article, reference is made to this author's work of some 10 years ago. Heijnen and van Dijken introduce the Gibbs' energy dissipation as a concept with favorable characteristics compared with various other approaches, including thermodynamic efficiency, as introduced by this author. In this communication, it will be shown that the “dissipation” and the “thermodynamic efficiency” description are completely equivalent and that there can be no preference for one of these in terms of rigor or characteristics. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.