CHEMICAL KINETICS

In Chapter 1, we discussed the equilibrium states of a thermochemical system. We have shown that by knowing the initial state of a reactive mixture, we can determine its final state after chemical and thermal equilibria have been established. However, the equilibrium calculations are not able to answer such relevant questions as: how does the mixture get from the initial state to the final state, and how long does it take to do so? Obviously if a particular reaction proceeds exceedingly slowly compared to other physical or chemical processes of interest, it is likely that this reaction could be either irrelevant to the system's behavior or not of controlling importance in being the rate-limiting step in the system's evolution.