Mechanochemical availability

THE thermodynamic functions ‘availability’ and ‘maximum work’, as they are usually defined 1–3 , are generally inapplicable to systems that interest the biologist and electrochemist for the reasons shown below. Here I propose the redefinition and generalisation of both functions, and explicitly define a thermodynamic property, the ‘mechanochemical availability’, that provides a measure of the maximum usable mechanochemical work that can be released in the interaction of a contractile system with a source or sink of chemical potential of constant intensive state.