AJP - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, Vol 243, Issue 1 185-R192, Copyright © 1982 by American Physiological Society
Coulometric microrespirometry
A. A. Heusner, J. P. Hurley and R. Arbogast
Capacitive coulometry is based on the automatic quantitative replacement of
O2 consumed by an animal in a closed system with electrolytic O2, produced
by discharging a capacitor through a CuSO4 solution. The sensitivity of the
device is better than 0.1 nl. The unit volume of O2 produced (1 nl) is both
accurate and precise within 1% in a temperature range from 2.8 to 40
degrees C. The upper limit of recordable O2 consumption is 1 ml/h. The
microrespirometer can be autoclaved, making the technique ideally suited
for metabolic studies in microbiology, cell and organ cultures, and
comparative physiology.
