Kinetics of a monomolecular reaction between n components

The reaction kinetics has been investigated of a general monomolecular reaction between n components, where reactions between some components are reversible and between others irreversible. The reacting components may be divided into groups so that all the components inside one group may change reversibly into each other, while reactions between components of different groups are irreversible. The reaction kinetics for each reversible group may be found similarly to the case where all the reactions are reversible; solutions for the individual reversible groups may be used to obtain solution for the whole system. A solution was also found to a difficult case in which matrices have multiple eigenvalues for irreversible consecutive reactions, namely, for a general case of degeneracy. Formulas are given for the calculation of derivatives of concentrations of the individual components with respect to parameters. The equations thus derived were applied to the reaction kinetics of a polymeranalogous reaction (e.g., hydrolysis of polyacrylonitrile).