Operating parameters' effects on the outcome of pure and simple competition between two populations in configurations of two interconnected chemostats.

It is known from the literature that two microbial populations competing purely and simply for a common substrate in a spatially inhomogeneous environment may under certain conditions coexist in a steady state. This paper studies pure and simple competition between two microbial species in three alternate configurations of two interconnected ideal chemostats and focuses on the effects of the operating parameters-dilution rate, substrate concentration in the feed to the vessels, recycle ratio, and volume ratio of the two vessels, splitting ratio of the external feed to the chemostats-on the coexistence of the two competitors. It is shown that the coexistence steady state is practically feasible in the sense that it occurs in a finite domain of the operating parameters space. Theoretical and numerical results are presented, some of them in the form of operating diagrams projected on the two-dimensional subspace. A comparison of the three possible configurations is offered.