Nonequilibrium gas reaction kinetics: The nonvanishing effect of vanishing products

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Abstract
Vanishing quantities of the products of a chemical reaction are found in general to have a nonvanishing effect on the system's ``normal state.'' The generality of this effect, previously observed by Pyun and Ross, is established through the use of a slightly altered expansion of the velocity distribution function. Each coefficient of this new expansion measures the contribution by one particular species to the perturbation of the entire system. The effect of ignoring small quantities of the products is determined for a particular simple system. An approximate solution to the Boltzmann equation for this system is obtained by the moment method, and the relaxation of this solution to the normal solution is confirmed. The resultant correction to the perturbation of the reaction rate is found to be considerable, but because of the small size of the perturbation, the correction to the rate itself is negligible.