Derivation of rate constant ratios for consecutive second‐order irreversible reactions.

The determination of rate constants for consecutive irreversible reactions is a difficult and time‐consuming problem, especially when the research extends up to many subsequent products. Thus, the derivation of proper mathematical expressions would greatly facilitate the determination of these rate constants when only the rate constant of the first consecutive reaction is known. Many authors have dealt with this problem in the past but the issue is still of interest to the scientific community judging from recent publications. This paper aims at extending our knowledge of mathematical expressions for rate constant ratios of consecutive reactions to more than three reactions, as is the situation now, and offering a simple graphical estimation of the rate constant ratios exploiting the maxima of each intermediate product. Furthermore, the method extends to the derivation of a generic formula for the estimation of the rate constant ratios based on this graphical approach. This approach for the estimation of rate constant ratios based on mathematical expressions and graphical estimations was validated against experimental data found in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]