Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-course-of-the-year-3-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/paper-3/43/b/ii/solution

The fast family is NO plus NO. Put , , and freeze the supplied parent concentrations while defining
The two equations are and . Their stationary solution is
Here , , and in inverse seconds; . Reversible storage must not be counted as permanent family loss: only the term represents the association route followed by hydrolysis.
Closed-family interconversion has . Including the supplied losses, the two linear relaxation times are approximately and , from the eigenvalues of . Fast exchange is therefore well separated from the slower total-family adjustment. However, NO is consumed by ozone on , comparable to and shorter than the family relaxation. Thus the quoted stationary concentration is justified for a maintained background or a sufficiently slowly varying quasi-stationary environment; it is not automatically reached in an isolated parcel initialized with the supplied composition. NO auto-oxidation is negligible at this concentration. Additional organic losses of NO, if present, would need to be added to the model.

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