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Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics of Closed and Open Chemical Networks
I will present a systematic procedure to study the thermodynamics of chemical networks made of coupled elementary reactions satisfying mass action law. Convergence to equilibrium is proved in closed networks. In open networks (i.e. networks where concentrations of some of the species called chemostats are hold fixed), assuming the existence of a steady state, I will demonstrate that the number of independent fluxes and forces constituting the entropy production of the network depends on the topology of the network. The main result is that the number of forces is equal to the number of chemostats minus the number of symmetries broken by adding the chemostats. Applications to the study of polymerization will be provided and the importance of the results for metabolic modelling will be discussed.
M. Polettini and M. Esposito, "Irreversible thermodynamics of open chemical networks I : Emergent cycles and broken conservation laws", J. Chem. Phys. 141, 024117 (2014).