MATHEMATICAL FUNDAMENTALS TO DETERMINE THE KINETIC CONSTANTS OF FIRST-ORDER CONSECUTIVE REACTIONS

An accurate mathematical analysis of the trend of experimental data to determine the kinetic constants of consecutive reactions is important for further design and optimization studies. For this purpose, the kinetics of the consecutive reactions was evaluated for different cases, and an unconstrained minimization (optimization) problem was defined to determine the kinetic constants. Minimization of least square analysis was used with the Newton's multivariable optimization procedure. The solution method for the defined optimization problem and the effect of initial guess parameters were discussed in detail. The applied optimization algorithm was then tested with simulated and literature‐reported kinetic data. The algorithm was shown to converge under different situations, and it was concluded that knowing the mathematical fundamentals and using them through different optimization techniques would be a useful tool in the evaluation of experimental data.