Model environment for the emergence of life at ~50°C on the floor of a putative Hadean acidulous ocean floor at a submarine alkaline warm seepage (Russell et al. 1994).
Note that the acidulous ocean is not only the proton donor to the protometabloic system but that it also contains within it, the electron acceptor, photolytic FeOOH. The system may be considered as a nexus of three chemical reactors: the convective system shown here corresponds to a flow reactor, the exhalative mound is comparable to a flat bed reactor (cf. Fig. 11) and the bubbles at the seepage site itself act as an assemblage of photoelectrochemical membrane reactors (cf. Fig. 22). Redox catalysis, which features in all three processors, is augmented by acid-base catalysis in the membrane reactors.
