Kinetic and Thermodynamic Lumping of Multicomponent Mixtures

Information necessary to solve scientific or engineering problems is often so vast, that the need arises to lump information together into a more manageable subset in order to proceed. The idea of lumping is one which is used, more or less consciously, in a large variety of fields. The thermodynamics and kinetic behavior of multicomponent mixtures is an area where the requirements of lumping have been clearly identified and the techniques and results of lumping have been analyzed in considerable detail. This book comprises the proceedings of a Symposium on Kinetic and Thermodynamic Lumping of Multicomponent Mixtures which was held at the American Chemical Society Meeting in Atlanta, GA, in April 1991. Papers presented at the symposium consisted of both invited and contributed papers. Each invited paper was a review of a subfield within the landscape of the symposium while the contributed papers contain detailed analyses of specific problems. The symposium brought together active researchers in this field to report on and discuss the progress which has been made in the lumping of mixtures of very many components for a number of different applications, and to identify the important problem areas which still remain. This volume will serve both as an introduction to anyone entering the field, and as a reference work for more experienced researchers.