Mass transfer and biochemical reaction with semipermeable microcapsules

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Abstract
Enzymes can be encapsulated within a semipermeable membrane which allows reactants to enter and the products to diffuse out. The mass transport from the external fluid to the membrane and the combined mass transport and biochemical reaction from the membrane inwards can be modeled with recognized formulations; measurements of the overall reaction rate lead then to estimates of the permeability of the membrane itself.With capsules enclosing catalase, the permeability of collodion membranes to H2O2 is found to be large (−2cm/sec) in comparison to rates in the other two diffusion zones. For this first‐order reaction system, an analytical solution to the transient case of the well‐stirred finite bath is found using the Laplace transform. With capsules enclosing urease, the nonlinear Michaelis‐Menten kinetics apply to the enzymatic step. The steady‐state operation of a column packed with urease microcapsules is analyzed with the aid of numerical computation and the membrane permeability for urea is found to be 10−3cm/sec.