AN IDENTITY IN CHEMICAL THERMODYNAMICS

In this work we consider the equilibrium state of a multicomponent system in which chemical reactions occur, and its sensitivity to the change of any of the thermodynamic parameters influencing the equilibrium. A general expression is obtained for the sensitivity coefficient partial-derivativen(i)/partial-derivativeY, where n(i) is the equilibrium amount of the ith chemical species in the system, and Y is a thermodynamic parameter such as temperature, pressure, initial amount of a species, chemical potential of a species, etc. We demonstrate that the sensitivity coefficients are linear combinations of contributions originating from certain special reactions, called response reactions, which are defined in the paper.