Finding the Irreversible Steps

If we want to distinguish the irreversible steps from the quasi-stationary ones, we have to look to another chemical quantity, the chemical potential (yw). Up to now, all the energy values in the energy span model were Gibbs standard energies, which is the information we can obtain from a typical quantum mechanical calculation of a catalytic cycle. However, the real nonstandard Gibbs energy of each intermediate (i.e., the chemical potential) must include their concentrations [46]  

When two states are in quasi-equilibrium, with the forward and reverse rates being much faster than the net chemical flow, those states must have the same yW, An irreversible step will see a significant lowering of the potential when passing 

We traveled through several basic kinetic concepts applied to catalysis, with some emphasis on organometaUic systems. In this trip, several misconceptions ( myths ) have been reviewed, trying to make some sense in the analysis of catalytic cycles. As said before, most of these misconceptions have been corrected a long time ago, and many researchers certainly know how to handle them (there is nothing new under the sun after all). However, that does not mean that they were uprooted from the textbooks, and consequently they are too common in research papers. Let us discuss one last myth. 

---