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Updated: Jul 12, 2026

Concurrent Quantification of Cellular and Extracellular Components of Biofilms
Published on: December 10, 2013
Cellular growth in biofilms
1Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99352, USA.
Abstract:
In this paper we develop a macroscopic evolutionary equation for the growth of the cellular phase starting from a microscopic description of mass transport and a simple structured model for product formation. The methods of continuum mechanics and volume averaging are used to develop the macroscopic representation by carefully considering the fluxes of chemical species that pertain to cell growth. The concept of structured models is extended to include the transport of reacting chemical species at the microscopic scale. The resulting macroscopic growth model is similar in form to previously published models for the transport of a single substrate and electron donor and for the production of cellular mass and exopolymer. The method of volume averaging indicates under what conditions the developed growth model is valid and provides an explicit connection between the relevant microscopic model parameters and their corresponding macroscopic counterparts.
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