Volume 39, Issue 4

The process of ATP production is one of the most vital processes in living cells which happens with a high efficiency. Thermodynamic evaluation of this process and the factors involved in oxidative phosphorylation can provide a valuable guide for increasing the energy production efficiency in research and industry. Although energy transduction has been studied qualitatively in several researches, there are only few brief reviews based on mathematical models on this subject. In our previous work, we suggested a mathematical model for ATP production based on non-equilibrium thermodynamic principles. In the present study, based on the new discoveries on the respiratory chain of animal mitochondria, Golfar's model has been used to generate improved results for the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation and the rate of energy loss. The results calculated from the modified coefficients for the proton pumps of the respiratory chain enzymes are closer to the experimental results and validate the model.

The energy and exergy performance of a parabolic dish collector is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The effect of receiver type, inlet temperature and mass flow rate of heat transfer fluid (HTF), receiver temperature, receiver aspect ratio and solar radiation are investigated. To evaluate the effect of the receiver aperture area on the system performance, three aperture diameters are considered. It is deduced that the fully opened receivers have the greatest exergy and thermal efficiency. The cylindrical receiver has greater energy and exergy efficiency than the conical one due to less exergy destruction. It is found that the highest exergy destruction is due to heat transfer between the sun and the receivers and counts for 35 % to 60 % of the total wasted exergy. For three selected receiver aperture diameters, the exergy efficiency is minimum for a specified HTF mass flow rate. High solar radiation allows the system to work at higher HTF inlet temperatures. To use this system in applications that need high temperatures, in cylindrical and conical receivers, the HTF mass flow rates lower than 0.05 and 0.09 kg/s are suggested, respectively. For applications that need higher amounts of energy content, higher HTF mass flow rates than the above mentioned values are recommended.

Even if not so ancient, the history of the heat engine efficiency at maximum power expression has been yet turbulent. More than a decade after the publication of the seminal article by Curzon and Ahlborn in 1975, two older works by Chambadal and Novikov were rediscovered, both dating from 1957. Then, some years ago, the name of Yvon arose from a textual reference to this famous relation in a conference article published in 1955. Thanks to a historical study of French-written books not published for a long time, and since never translated into other languages, we bring to light in this paper that this relation was actually first proposed by Henri B. Reitlinger in 1929.

Gene expression in eukaryotic cells is an extremely complex and interesting phenomenon whose dynamics are controlled by a large number of subtle physicochemical processes commonly described by means of gene regulatory networks. Such networks consist in a series of coupled chemical reactions, conformational changes, and other biomolecular processes involving the interaction of the DNA molecule itself with a number of proteins usually called transcription factors as well as enzymes and other components. The kinetics behind the functioning of such gene regulatory networks are largely unknown, though its description in terms of non-equilibrium thermodynamics has been discussed recently. In this work we will derive general kinetic equations for a gene regulatory network from a non-equilibrium thermodynamical description and discuss its use in understanding the free energy constrains imposed in the network structure. We also will discuss explicit expressions for the kinetics of a simple model of gene regulation and show that the kinetic role of mRNA decay during the RNA synthesis stage (or transcription) is somehow limited due to the comparatively low values of decay rates. At the level discussed here, this implies a decoupling of the kinetics of mRNA synthesis and degradation a fact that may become quite useful when modeling gene regulatory networks from experimental data on whole genome gene expression.

In this article, we examine ethane hydrate formation kinetics with and without the presence of various surfactants. Firstly, the influences of stirring rate and initial pressure without the presence of surfactants are studied. The effects of four surfactants containing Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS), Polyoxyethylene (20) sorbitanmonopalmitate (Tween ® 40), and TritonX-100 (TX-100) on ethane hydrate formation kinetics were experimentally investigated. Then the chemical affinity model is applied to model the ethane hydrate formation kinetics with and without surfactants. The kinetic parameters of the chemical affinity model were computed for the ethane hydrate formation with and without surfactants. We will see that the results of the modeling are in good agreement with the experimental data.

In this work, we demonstrate that the thermodynamic potential calculated from the steady-state flow curve using the definition of free energy from irreversible thermodynamics, and the mechanical potential derived from the generalized BMP constitutive equation provide the same information in the unstable and metastable regions of the flow curve. The contribution of normal stresses in both potentials as well as its weight on the position of the stress plateau are explicitly exposed. The plateau stress is univocally defined by the location of the critical shear rates corresponding to the minima in the potential. This demonstration is carried out using experimental data of wormlike micellar solutions for various concentrations and temperatures, including regions close to the non-equilibrium critical point. A method to accurately determine the non-equilibrium critical point (or the critical temperature) in a direct form is provided here. Bifurcation points are defined, notably one located at the high shear-rate branch of the flow curve separating the regions of one real solution and three real solutions. The first normal stress difference exhibits three real solutions as sources of elastic instabilities in the high shear band. The contribution of the second normal-stress difference in both the mechanical and thermodynamic potentials is clearly exposed. These results demonstrate that the non-equilibrium phase transition and the mechanical instability as sources of the banded flow are essentially two manifestations of the same reality.