Reaction of elementary steps in series

The overall rates of the forward and backward reactions, and are related with the rates of the respective forward and backward elementary steps, and as shown in Eqns. 7-38 and 7-39  

Further, Eqn. 7—16 yields the ratio in the rate of the forward step to the backward step as expressed in Eqn. 7-40  

We consider next a simple reaction composed of two elemental steps shown in Fig. 7—10. The rates of the overall reaction in the forward and backward directions can be obtained as a fiinction of the rates of the two elemental steps as given in Eqn. 7-41  

The ratio of the forward to the backward reaction rates is consequently represented in Eqn. 7-42 by the product of the ratios for the two elementary steps  

For multistep reactions, in general, the following relationship has been obtained [Matsuda-Horiuti, 1962]  

---