Chemical kinetics, background

The rates of chemical processes and their variation with conditions have been studied for many years, usually for the purpose of determining reaction mechanisms. Thus, the subject of chemical kinetics is a very extensive and important part of chemistry as a whole, and has acquired an enormous literature. Despite the number of books and reviews, in many cases it is by no means easy to find the required information on specific reactions or types of reaction or on more general topics in the field. It is the purpose of this series to provide a background reference work, which will enable such information to be obtained either directly, or from the original papers or reviews quoted. 

The main goal of this chapter is to review the most widely used modeling techniques to analyze sorption/desorption data generated for environmental systems. Since the definition of sorption/desorption (i.e., a mass-transfer mechanism) process requires the determination of the rate at which equilibrium is approached, some important aspects of chemical kinetics and modeling of sorption/desorption mechanisms for solid phase systems are discussed. In addition, the background theory and experimental techniques for the different sorption/ desorption processes are considered. Estimations of transport parameters for organic pollutants from laboratory studies are also presented and evaluated. 

In the previous chapters, the fundamental areas of thermodynamics and chemical kinetics were reviewed. These areas provide the background for the study of very fast reacting systems, termed explosions. In order for flames (deflagrations) or detonations to propagate, the reaction kinetics must be fast—that is, the mixture must be explosive. 

The initial chapters of this book (through Chapter 7) concentrate on fluid mechanics, with an emphasis on establishing the fundamental conservation equations that are needed to formulate and solve chemically reacting flow problems. In these chapters, however, details of the chemistry and the molecular transport are treated fairly simply. The following five chapters (Chapters 8 through 12) provide much more depth on thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, and molecular transport. With the physical-chemistry background established,... 

Chemical Kinetics of Solids covers a special part of solid state chemistry and physical chemistry. It has been written for graduate students and researchers who want to understand the physical chemistry of solid state processes in fair depth and to be able to apply the basic ideas to new (practical) situations. Chemical Kinetics of Solids requires the standard knowledge of kinetic textbooks and a sufficient chemical thermodynamics background. The fundamental statistical theory underlying the more or less phenomenological approach of this monograph can be found in a recent book by A. R. Allnatt and A.B. Lidiard Atomic Transport in Solids, which complements and deepens the theoretical sections. 

These methods work best at nanomolar chemical concentrations so that the focal volume contains typically 1 to 100 molecules on average. Because the method is so sensitive, it is susceptible to perturbation by background fluorescence and instrumentation fluctuations. These problems have become quite tractable during the last decade, such that FCS now supports more than 100 publications per year. A current challenging application is analysis of protein folding kinetics, protein structure fluctuations, and ultrafast chemical kinetics by new methods yet to be published. 

We have tried, without being overly formalistic, to develop the subject in a systematic manner with attention to basic concepts and clarity of derivations. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the basic concepts of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and chemical kinetics. In addition, some knowledge of statistical mechanics is required and, since not all potential readers may have that, we have included an appendix that summarizes the most important results of relevance. The book is reasonably self-contained such that a standard background in mathematics, physics, and physical chemistry should be sufficient and make it possible for the students to follow and understand the derivations and developments in the book. A few sections may be a little more demanding, in particular some of the sections on quantum dynamics and stochastic dynamics. 

It should be added that chemical kinetics, like any other science, can be developed only through the cooperation of the members of a team comprising all contemporary workers in that field and that any advance rests on the work of former and contemporary scientists. Such considerations form the background for the presentation of problems concerning the elucidation of the mechanisms of chemical reactions given in this paper. 

Chemical kinetics is the study of the rate and mechanism of reaction. At ocean boundaries chemical fluxes are often determined hy the interplay of molecular diffusion and reaction rates. Both of these topics are important to the chemical perspective of oceanography because they provide the necessary mechanistic and mathematical background for the study of chemical fluxes. 

BACKGROUND RATES OF CHEMICAL KINETIC AND TRANSPORT PROCESSES... 

Background rates of chemical kinetic and transport processes 511... 

This book presents the theory and operation of a variety of temperature scanning reactors. To the average user this equipment will one day be just another black box". The detaBs of the TSR methods and their theoretical justification will fade into the background. What wiK remain is an instrument that enhances the user s ability to work in chemical kinetics and mechanistic studies. 

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