ABSTRACT
No study of chemical reaction engineering can be complete without an examination of chemical kinetics. Kinetic analysis deals with the molecular processes involved in a chemical reaction that lead to a formulation of the rate equation. In Chapter 3, the rate of reaction was seen to be an integral part of the mole balance equation for a chemical reactor. In that chapter, the rate equation was not considered in much detail and this chapter supplies some of the necessary details. This chapter starts with a discussion of the general nature of rate equations, and continues with a brief look at reaction rate theories. Rate equations for both simple reactions and those that proceed via complex multistep mechanisms are considered. Some of the common methods for deriving rate expressions from postulated mechanisms are then given.
