4. Computer kinetics

An overview of computer applications to chemical kinetics was drawn up by the author in 1983 [12] . A decade later, the old software has been improved and generalized; new software has appeared, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, and powerful mathematical methods have been adapted to kinetics [32] . It has to be said that, for the time being, these advances have mainly concerned radical reactions in the gas phase, but an extension to heterogeneous catalysis and heterogeneous reactions (deposition of solids from gases, for example) is beginning to emerge.

Computer processing of a kinetic problem involves four main phases:

• creation of a detailed reaction model ;...