Blood alcohol levels above 0.4 % (assumed on a per mass basis are generally A 100-pound woman or man who consumed nine to ten beers in less than one hour would be in the lethal does range. Your goal is to design a reactor to be used in ambulatory care on the way to the hospital to decodify an individual sufferering form alcohol poisoning. the reactor would have to be small enough to fir in an already crowded ambulance. Is this possible? We'll find out.

Other pieces of possibly useful information:

The enzymatic reaction of ethanol with alcohol dehydrogenase [ADH] works to the body by production acetaldehydes

CH_3CH_2OH + NAD ^+ CH_3CHO + NADH + H^+

The reaction mechanism is quite complex^1 and depends not only on the reaction rate and transformation of alcohol to acetaldehyde but also the transformation of NAD to NADH and the deprotonation and reaction of ADH active site. Subsequent metabolic steps are 1] acetaldehyde is broken down into acetic acid, and Z] acetic acid is transformed into acetyl-CoA (part of the Krebs cycle) which also requires NAD.

The enzymatic conversion of ethanol to acetaldehyde can be approximated by the rate law: where v_mn is the theoretical maximum reaction rate, c is the concentration of alcohol, km is the enzyme half saturation coefficient (a measure of dissociation of substrate from the enzyme) and where NAD is in large excess, such that the concentration of NAD and NADH is nearly constant. As a point of interest, the term v_max has the concentration of enzyme buried in it.

Rate constants for ADH is k = 2.1 Times 10^-5 M and V_mm = 1 mu mole ethanol/min per enzyme. Also, each enzyme is approximately spherical and has an estimated radius of 3 nm. In general, enzymes have a volumetric density of 0.73 cm^3/g. Face-centered cubic packing is the densest (equal size sphere) packing type with -74 % packing density, meaning there is 26 % void space{ponosity}.

The human body contains approximetaly 5L of blood. Optimal pH of reaction occur at 869.0 pH units and blood pH is 7.35. To simplify the system, assume that the reactor operaters at blood pH but no loss of activity of the enzyme occurs.

Qualitatively explain why a batch reactor or standand CSTR would not be the best choice for treating alcohol poisoning. List the mole balance for a PBR, region rate (above), and stooichiometric tables. Assuming you must reduce the blood alcohol level to 0.01% (by mass) and the body most be cleansed in less than 15 minutes, what is the resultane enzyme weight to achieve this and number of enzymes? What is the outlet pH of the reactor? What other considerations should you be accounting for in making this device and what assumptions have we made that probably aren't valid?