THE DECREASING RATE OF FERMENTATION

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Abstract
The rate of fermentation per unit of cells in any culture decreases and finally becomes zero when the endpoint is reached. A number of experiments of older investigations referring to alcoholic and lactic fermentation were analyzed to determine the kinetics of this retardation, and some new experiments were made to prove the validity of the relations found. The decrease in rate of fermentation is proportional to the concentration of fermentation products divided by the limiting (or final) concentration of these products, or, in other words, tne decrease is proportional to that % of the total possible products which is already formed. By applying this mathematically, a "fermentation constant" can be developed which represents the rate of fermentation corrected for any retardation by its own products. The computation of this constant from available data gave values of sufficient constancy to consider them a proof of the general principle involved. In adding fermentation products to cultures containing a large amount of cells, a straight-line relationship was found between rate of fermentation and amount of products added. This proves the same proportionality as above. If the fermentation products added reach the limiting concentration, a slow but noticeable fermentation seems to occur, provided that the number of fermenting cells is very large. This was found with yeast as well as with L. acidophilus.

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