Absorbed heat and heat of formation of dried microbial biomassstudies on the thermodynamics of microbial growth

As represented by equations in which there is a term representing the biomass, the thermodynamics of biological growth processes is difficult to study without knowing the thermodynamic properties of cellular structural fabric. Measurement of the heat capacity data required to determine the standard entropy, So _298,15 or the standard absorbed heat, (H o _298,15 -ΔHo ₀ =Θo _298,15 of biomass requires a low-temperature calorimter, and these are not present in most laboratories. Based on a previously described method for entropy, two equations are developed that enable values of the absorbed heat (Θo _298,15) and the absorbed heat of formation, (Δ _f Θo _298,15) for biomass to be calculated empirically which are accurate to within 1% with respect to the biomass substances tested. These equations depend on a previous knowledge of the atomic composition or the unit-carbon formulas of macromolecules or structural cellular fabric. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.