Introduction

Abstract

Chemical kinetics as a science has existed for more than a century. It deals with the rates of reactions and the details of how a given reaction proceeds from reactants to products. In a chemical system with many chemical species, there are several questions to be asked: What species react with what other species? In what temporal order? With what catalysts? And with what results? The answers constitute the macroscopic reaction mechanism. The process can be described macroscopically by listing the reactants, intermediates, products, and all the elementary reactions and catalysts in the reaction system. The present book is a treatise and text on the determination of complex reaction mechanisms in chemistry and in chemical reaction systems that occur in chemical engineering, biochemistry, biology, biotechnology, and genomics. A basic knowledge of chemical kinetics is assumed. Several approaches are suggested for the deduction of information on the causal chemical connectivity of the species, on the elementary reactions among the species, and on the sequence of the elementary reactions that constitute the reaction pathway and the reaction mechanism. Chemical reactions occur by the collisions of molecules, and such an event is called an elementary reaction for specified reactant and product molecules. A balanced stoichiometric equation for an elementary reaction yields the number of each type of molecule according to conservation of atoms, mass, and charge. Figure 1.1 shows a relatively simple reaction mechanism for the decomposition of ozone by light, postulated to occur in a series of three elementary steps. (The details of collisions of molecules and bond rearrangements are not discussed.) All approaches are based on the measurements of the concentrations of chemical species in the whole reaction system, not on parts, as has been the practice. One approach is called the pulse method, in which a pulse of concentration of one or more species of arbitrary strength is applied to a reacting system and the responses of as many species as possible are measured. From these responses causal chemical connectivities may be inferred. The basic theory is explained, demonstrated on a model mechanism, and tested in an experiment on a part of glycolysis.