THE CHEMICAL EQUILIBRIUM PROBLEM

It has long been known that the problem of determining the equilibrium composition of a solution of chemically reacting species could be formulated as a constrained minimum problem. Previous methods for solving the chemical equilibrium problem in this form have had much success. However, all such methods run into trouble whenever degeneracy or near-degeneracy occurs during the computational procedure. The paper shows that the constrained minimum formulation of the chemical equilibrium problem is equivalent to a generalized linear program which can in turn be replaced by a quadratic program. In these alternative forms, degeneracy is more easily accomodated than in previous methods.