The Investigation of Organic Reactions and Their Mechanisms (PDF)

A range of alternative mechanisms can usually be postulated for
most organic chemical reactions, and identification of the most
likely requires detailed investigation. Investigation of Organic
Reactions and their Mechanisms will serve as a guide for the
trained chemist who needs to characterise an organic chemical
reaction and investigate its mechanism, but who is not an expert in
physical organic chemistry.

Such an investigation will lead to an understanding of which
bonds are broken, which are made, and the order in which these
processes happen. This information and knowledge of the associated
kinetic and thermodynamic parameters are central to the development
of safe, efficient, and profitable industrial chemical processes,
and to extending the synthetic utility of new chemical reactions in
chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and academic
environments.

Written as a coherent account of the principal methods currently
used in mechanistic investigations, at a level accessible to
academic researchers and graduate chemists in industry, the book is
highly practical in approach. The contributing authors, an
international group of expert practitioners of the techniques
covered, illustrate their contributions by examples from their own
research and from the relevant wider chemical literature. The book
covers basic aspects such as product analysis, kinetics, catalysis,
and investigation of reactive intermediates. It also includes
material on significant recent developments, e.g. computational
chemistry, calorimetry, and electrochemistry, in addition to topics
of high current industrial relevance, e.g. reactions in multiphase
systems, and synthetically useful reactions involving free radicals
and catalysis by organometallic compounds.