On the Theory of Chemically Reacting Gas

The method to determine the molecular velocity distribution in steady reaction in homogeneous gas phase with negligible reaction heat is formulated, and especially the case where one of the reacting molecules is very light is studied in detail. In this case the perturbation of the distribution function by the chemical reaction becomes most remarkable, and the expansion by the Sonine's polynomials is not always useful. Even then, the correction to the reaction rate is very small except for the most unfavorable case and therefore we may use the Maxwellian distribution to calculate the reaction rate.