What is a chemostat? Insights from hybrid dynamics and stochastic thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper explores the thermodynamic behavior of chemical reaction networks, showing how closed networks can mimic open ones in certain limits and deriving their entropy production rates using stochastic thermodynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that closed chemical networks can behave like open systems under specific conditions and derives their entropy production, linking stochastic thermodynamics with chemical network theory.

Findings

Closed networks mimic open systems in the macroscopic limit.

Entropy production includes contributions from stochastic and continuous reactions.

Thermodynamic consistency is established through local detailed balance.

Abstract

At the microscopic scale, open chemical reaction networks are described by stochastic reactions that follow mass-action kinetics and are coupled to chemostats. We show that closed chemical reaction networks -- with specific stoichiometries imposed by mass-action kinetics -- behave like open ones in the limit where the abundances of a subset of species become macroscopic, thus playing the role of chemostats. We prove that this limit is thermodynamically consistent by recovering the local detailed balance condition of open chemical reaction networks and deriving the proper expression of the entropy production rate. In particular, the entropy production rate features two contributions: one accounting for the dissipation of the stochastic reactions, the other for the dissipation of continuous reactions controlling the chemostats. Finally, we illustrate our results for two prototypical examples.