Figure 1
From: Reactive transport modeling of organic carbon degradation in marine methane hydrate systems
Schematics of the microbially-mediated degradation of particulate organic carbon (POC) in marine methane hydrate system. (A) In a simplified one-step process, POC is converted to methane and CO2 with a single rate constant \(K\). (B) In this paper, POC is hydrolyzed with a reaction rate constant \({K}_{eh}\) driven by extracellular enzymes and a small background rate constant \({K}_{o}\). The produced high-molecular weight dissolved organic carbon (HMW-DOC) is fermented to generate low-molecular weight DOC (LMW-DOC) with a rate constant \((1-\varepsilon ){K}_{fm}\) and small amounts of extracellular enzymes at a rate constant \(\varepsilon {K}_{fm}\) (\(\varepsilon \ll 1\)). LMW-DOC is then metabolized at a rate constant \({K}_{m}\) to produce terminal end products methane and CO2.
