MAINTENANCE COEFFICIENT CHANGES DURING ALCOHOL FERMENTATION - COMMENT

The concept of maintenance is discussed in terms of the biological meaning and the applicability of the maintenance coefficient, m, in bioengineering for optimization of yields in fermentation. A method of calculation is proposed for the evaluation of m in the course of fermentation in the case of a metabolite (e.g, ethanol). During alcoholic fermentation m is not constant and decreases with the growth rate. The phenomena involved in maintenance are numerous and complex and there is a semantic problem in its definition which can be generalized by the apparently non-finalized substrate consumption". © 1979 Kluwer Academic Publishers."