Compound and other optimum designs for systems of nonlinear differential equations arising in chemical kinetics

The optimum design of experiments for nonlinear models requires parameter sensitivities, that is the derivatives of the response with respect to the parameters. If the differential equations forming the kinetic model do not have an analytical solution, numerical derivatives have to be used. We describe the “direct” method for calculating the sensitivities and apply it to the design of experiments for estimating the order of chemical reactions.