The differential method in chemical kinetics

Abstract

This paper discusses the application to kinetic data of direct methods of reduction, in an attempt to develop the capacity of differential kinetic equations. The differential method is very often relegated by the integral method in the treatment of kinetic data. Several methods are described for the obtention of reaction rates with a small margin of error at every kinetic reading; the interpolating spline function is applied and a piece-wise interpolating method with overlapping intervals is suggested. These methods have been applied to several reactions with satisfactory results, showing the usefulness of the differential method for the determination of orders of reaction and rate constants.