A combined reaction class approach with integrated molecular orbital plus molecular orbital (IMOMO) methodology: A practical tool for kinetic modeling

We present a new practical computational methodology for predicting thermal rate constants of reactions involving large molecules or a large number of elementary reactions in the same class. This methodology combines the integrated molecular orbital+molecular orbital (IMOMO) approach with our recently proposed reaction class models for tunneling. With the new methodology, we show that it is possible to significantly reduce the computational cost by several orders of magnitude while compromising the accuracy in the predicted rate constants by less than 40% over a wide range of temperatures. Another important result is that the computational cost increases only slightly as the system size increases. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(00)00201-4].